RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch 29th and 30th January

Exciting things happening over the weekend...

It's the annual RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch, where hundreds of thousands of people across the country count the birds (or lack of) visiting their garden.

RSPB say:
"If like us, you love birds and want to help them, then the Big Garden Birdwatch is your chance to do something that really counts. All you need is a pen, some scrap paper (or, a printout of our handy bird ID sheet), and an hour to spend watching the birds in your garden on either Saturday 29, or Sunday 30 January 2011.

Then simply record the highest number of each bird species seen in your garden, or local park (not flying over) at any one time, and come back to these page to tell us what you saw.

For over 30 years, we've been asking our supporters to count the birds in their garden. During this time, more than 3 million hours have been clocked up watching and enjoying the birds that visit our gardens (that's more than 380 years!), and every year, some 6 million birds are spotted by people like you.

With results from some 280,000 gardens helping us create a 'snapshot' of bird numbers in each region, we've been able to see that some of our birds are disappearing in scary numbers.

We've lost more than half our house sparrows, and three-quarters of our starlings, and your results have certainly helped highlight these dramatic declines.

However, it isn't all doom and gloom - these surveys might help us spot problems, but more importantly, they are also the first step to help aid a species recovery."

As an RSPB member, I will be out in the garden on Sunday morning counting the birds!