26-28 January 2019…

How does Big Garden Birdwatch help?

For 40 years, the RSPB been asking you to count the birds in your garden – and you’ve been brilliant at it.

With over half a million people now regularly taking part, coupled with almost 40 years worth of data, Big Garden Birdwatch allows us to monitor trends and helps us understand how birds are doing.

As the format of the survey has stayed the same, the scientific data can be compared year-on-year, making your results very valuable to our scientists.

With results from so many gardens, they have been able to create a ‘snapshot’ of bird numbers across the UK.

While some changes in bird numbers can seem scary – we’ve lost more than half our house sparrows and some three-quarters of our starlings – it isn’t all doom and gloom. Since Birdwatch began blue tit numbers have risen by 20 per cent and the woodpigeon population has increased by a whopping 800 per cent.

Your results help the RSPB spot problems, but more importantly, they are also the first step in putting things right. This is why it’s so important that we count garden birds.