Pigeons are muscling robins out

It is one of Britain's best-loved and familiar birds, but the robin is losing out in the country's gardens.

It is being superceded by, of all things, pigeons. That is the finding of the largest snapshot survey conducted of our garden birds, the 2002 Royal Society for the Protection of Bird's annual Big Garden Birdwatch.

The RSPB asked for volunteers to record the species of birds they saw in their garden during any single hour in the last weekend in January. They also asked them to record the largest number of each species they saw together.

The results provide an insight into the bird population relying on British gardens for their winter quarters. In some cases that includes the British breeding population and migrants from across Europe. The three most common garden birds are starlings - an average of 4.5 in every one of the gardens of the 261,000 people surveyed. Then came the house sparrow, with four per garden and the blue tit, with an average of three. These rankings and numbers are almost identical to last year's survey, in which 52,000 people took part. Fourth most common was the blackbird, with 2.7, the chaffinch with 2.4 and the greenfinch.

The robin only sneaks into the top 10. For the first time on record, it is less common than the collared dove and great tit, and 10th equal with the wood pigeon. There were only 1.3 of each species, on average, per garden. Dove and pigeon last year were ninth and tenth place. The survey is the biggest annual event since its inauguration in 1979, and probably the most accurate of garden bird species conducted.

According to the British Trust for Ornithology, which has a Garden Birdwatch all year round, the numbers should be taken only as a snapshot, useful as a comparison with previous years, and not necessarily a reliable guide to underlying populations.

"In our surveys, the robin invariably comes in as one of the two most common birds," said Mike Toms, its co-ordinator. "Robins are territorial all year round, and because they have only one pair for each breeding territory, you will not see more than two in most gardens."

The numbers in gardens is also not a reliable indicator of the population breeding, he said. "The numbers of some species like the starling will have been boosted by winter migrants. If you look at the number of breeding birds - which excludes winter visitors from Europe - the house sparrow and starling are outside the top 10, and are declining," he said.