The Window List Listen
Two house sparrows feeding at a hanging seed feeder with a brown roof.

Sixty-one birds from one kitchen window

A blog and a fortnightly podcast about the birds that turn up while the kettle boils.

Listen to the latest episode

One window, one notebook

A woman looking up through binoculars with sunlight flaring through the trees behind her.

I'm Maggie Rowe. Since March 2019 I have written down every bird I have seen from the window above my kitchen sink in Kendal. Not the garden, not the walk to the shops. Just the window.

See the whole list

From the journal

Notes from the sink

Short posts, written the same morning, usually with cold tea.

A robin peering out from a hedge of small round leaves.
The robin who lives in the box hedge
A great tit with a black head and yellow breast perched on a green rail.
Great tits and the fat ball war
A small tit with its wings spread, taking off from a branch against a pale blue sky.
Species 61: a coal tit, at last
Read the journal

The list, 2019 to now

Everyone who has visited

No. 1
Blackbird. 14 March 2019, 7.10 am, on the shed roof.
No. 7
Robin. The same one, or his grandson, every winter since.
No. 19
Collared dove. A pair, nesting in the gutter. The landlord was not pleased.
No. 33
Sparrowhawk. Eleven seconds, no survivors at the feeder.
No. 48
Waxwing. Six of them, one January, on next door's rowan.
No. 52
Kingfisher. A blue flash over the beck at the back. Counted after a long argument with myself.
No. 61
Coal tit. September 2025. Long overdue.
A kingfisher perched on a thin twig over bright blue water.

The podcast

Latest episodes

Recorded at the kitchen table every other Thursday. Twenty minutes, give or take a blackbird.

All 82 episodes
Two collared doves on a balcony planter among green plants.

The doves in the gutter

Ep. 82 · 22 min

Why collared doves arrived in Britain only in the 1950s, and why mine never leave.

The silhouette of a small bird on a branch against an orange dawn sky.

Who sings first

Ep. 81 · 19 min

I sat at the sink at 4.30 am for a week to find out who starts the dawn chorus.

A robin standing on a lichen-covered branch.

Is it the same robin?

Ep. 80 · 24 min

A ringer from the county bird club explains how long robins live, and breaks my heart a little.

Before you start your own list

  1. Choose one window and stick to it. The rule is what makes the list interesting.
  2. Write down the time and the weather, not just the bird.
  3. Only count what you are sure of. A maybe stays a maybe in the margin.
  4. Keep the binoculars by the kettle, not in the drawer.
Send me your list
A man in a dark jacket looking through binoculars in a bare winter wood. A robin standing on a weathered wooden bench in a shady garden.

Join the window club

A short note when a new episode is out, and a photo of whatever is at the feeder that morning.

Get the note