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Starlings top of the tree in garden poll
Starlings are the birds most commonly spotted in the capital's gardens, results from an annual RSPB suvey have shown.
The small but confident birds topped the tree, followed closely by house sparrows and woodpigeons taking second and third place in the rankings.
Around 7,100 people took part in the 29th annual Big Garden Birdwatch, held over the weekend of January 26 and 27.
The top ten bird species spotted by amateur twitchers in Greater London, were: 1 Starling 2 House sparrow 3 Woodpigeon 4 Blue tit 5 Blackbird 6 Feral pigeon 7 Robin 8 Magpie 9 Great tit 10 Collared dove.
Across the UK, results collected by almost 400,000 people show numbers of colourful finches visiting gardens over winter have been at their highest levels for five years.
But overall garden bird numbers are at their lowest over the same period.
The average number of birds seen in each garden has declined by a fifth since 2004 - however four species of finch, which spend the winter in the UK, have increased.
The striking siskin made it into the top 20 for the first time in the surveys history.
The RSPB's Dr Andre Farrar, said: "It's definitely been a good winter for finches! Many of them are here because of food supplies.
"Along with siskin increases, numbers of redpolls seen in gardens have skyrocketed. Again this is probably due to supply of food; both birds feed on conifers and deciduous seeds, so the figures suggest that tree seed supplies have been poor this year and they've been forced into gardens to find food."
The house sparrow retained its UK top spot. The starling remained in second place across the UK and the blackbird completed the top three.
9:43am Wednesday 26th March 2008
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