Which Are London's Commonest Birds?

These are the birds most regularly spotted in London's gardens. We've shown them in relative proportion. So, for example, blackbirds (centre-right) are roughly four times as common as jays (bottom-right). Most common of all are the woodpigeons (trooping across the top of the image), closely followed by the plucky house sparrow, whose numbers are nevertheless in decline.

The image is based on the 2015 Big Garden Birdwatch, an annual survey of the nation's avian populations. The survey data is for the whole of Greater London, not just the centre, and is based on thousands of observations by Londoners.

Here they are in order of abundance (roughly top to bottom in the image).

Woodpigeon, house sparrow, starling, blue tit, feral pigeon, common blackbird, ring-necked parakeet, magpie, robin, great tit, goldfinch, carrion crow, collared dove, dunnock, long-tailed tit, common gull, chaffinch, coal tit, jay.

(We've used Creative Commons images of the birds. Click each link for the source.)

We've shown only the most commonly sighted birds. Many others were spotted, including such exotics as treecreepers, waxwings, yellowhammers and buzzards. The full data can be downloaded as a spreadsheet from the Big Garden Birdwatch results page.

And finally, here's our avian host crammed into the outline of Greater London. Just for a lark.