Gear Up For The Big Garden Birdwatch

Reading Time: 9 minutes

January can be a long, hard month but there’s one date to look forward to and that’s the annual Big Garden Birdwatch, organised by the RSPB and taking place this year between January 24th and 26th.

An annual event, the Birdwatch is the biggest garden wildlife survey in the world, with hundreds of thousands of avid ornithophiles coming together to help build a better picture of just how our little garden birds are doing.

Why is this necessary?

You might not know it, but bird populations the world over are in decline, in large part because of an increase in intensive agricultural practices that feature heavy use of some pesticides. 

In the UK, RSPB research shows that some of the worst affected birds are starlings, skylarks and house sparrows, but the overall picture for our feathered friends really is quite stark… with one in every six birds lost since 1980, equating to 600 million breeding birds over the course of 40 years.

Bird numbers are also being threatened by seasonal changes and diseases like avian flu… so it’s important for us all to come together to monitor populations to gain valuable insights into how garden birds are doing.

How do you take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch?

Last year, more than 600,000 people participated in the Birdwatch, with an incredible 9.7 million birds counted around the UK. 

While house sparrows were the most spotted of them all, their numbers are still down by 60 per cent compared to 1979 and the first annual Birdwatch event. Similarly, song thrush counts are down 85 per cent since the inaugural watch and, in total, 38 million birds have been lost from our skies in the last 60 years.

The good news is that it couldn’t be easier to take part in the Birdwatch!

All you have to do is dedicate one hour of your time to watching the birds that congregate around the bird feeders in your garden or a spot in your local community, recording those that land around you. Make sure that you make a note of the highest number of each bird species that you see at any one time.

Once your hour is up, you can submit your results either online or by post. Job done! Make sure that you get your results in by February 23rd, or February 18th for postal records, so that your count is included in the total amount for the year.

If you’re new to the wonderful world of birds and aren’t sure how to identify the ones you see, you can make excellent use of our Spotter’s Guide, which will help you find more about your friendly garden visitors.

What do you need to attract birds to your garden?

If you really want to welcome birds into your garden, you can easily achieve this by using bird feeders or a bird table, providing them with high energy foods (particularly important during winter), such as peanuts, dried mealworms, suet dumplings and fat balls, and our High Energy No Mess products.

Aside from doing your bit to help the nation’s beleaguered bird populations out, the added benefit of taking part in the Birdwatch is that you’ll spend an incredibly mindful hour engaging with nature… and who knows? You might be inspired to become a twitcher and do even more birdwatching over the next few months!

In 2024, the most spotted birds in the Birdwatch were house sparrows, blue tits, starlings, woodpigeons and blackbirds. 

What do you think this year’s top bird might be?

Download our latest Feeding Wild Birds PDF wall chart below and tick off Which Birds Have You Seen?

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