Thursday 10 January 2013

Big Garden Birdwatch

The RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch has grown from humble beginnings in 1979 to now be the largest wildlife survey in the world!

And if you live in the UK, you can get involved very easily. All you need to do is to watch the birds in your garden or local park for one hour during the weekend of 26 - 27 January and record what you see. Full details are here.
 
If you aren't confident about identifying the birds that you see, the Big Garden Birdwatch website has a useful id chart or you can visit the bird identification pages of the main RSPB website.

I know that many people reading this blog love birds as much as I do, they bring colour and life into gardens all year round. The Big Garden Birdwatch offers the chance to get to know your garden birds better and also to feed your observations into the national survey. Over half a million people now regularly taking part, which combined with over 30 years worth of data, means that Big Garden Birdwatch enables the RSPB to monitor trends and to understand how birds are doing in the UK.

So make yourself a cup of tea, pull your chair up to the window, get your binoculars out and start counting! 

And if you are interested in recording your bird sightings all year round, then you can enter them onto Birdtrack

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

6 comments:

Bill said...

Sounds like fun I'll be thinking about this over my morning coffee.

Caroline Gill said...

I'm looking forward to doing this soon ... for our first time in Suffolk.

Tommaso Gervasutti said...

Here in Venice: robins and sparrows and blackbirds on my balcony...pigeons everywhere, jackdaws and back-heahed gulls and herring gulls. And cormorants with their straight flight brushing the water skin. Inside the lagoon, and on the skirts of the mainland egrets and the majestic white and grey herons.
And buzzards in and out of poplars' and plain trees.

eileeninmd said...

It is a fun event. We have the same thing here in February. The Great Backyard Bird Count. I can not wait.

RG said...

Count them up! Great project.

Big Christmas count was held over here, and I think there is a feeder count as well.

In the Christmas count, our county found more species than any other in Washington State - so I am told by my friends who participated.

Rosalind Adam said...

I've done this for the last few years but since we had our two lively cats the birds have stopped coming to my feeders. When we had our old toothless cat they took no notice of her. Clever creatures, aren't they! There are still birds, especially in the Yew tree so I'll go along and register. Thanks for the reminder.