On the weekend of the 26-27 January 2008, the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch took place. Not only is it the world’s biggest bird survey it is also the RSPB’s biggest event of the year – and you don’t need to be have an RSPB membership to take part! In 2006 over 400,000 people took part by counting the birds in their garden for an hour and results for 2007 are showing 122,982 people taking part – and results have only been gathered for 3 days! We’ll keep you up to date as and when we get more info on the final numbers that took part – let’s hope they can beat that magic 4k mark!
The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch is a fantastic event as it’s so simple to take part in and you don’t have to be an Alan Partridge or Bill Oddie style bird expert to take part! Each participant needs to make notes over a period of just one hour, and record the highest number of each bird species seen in their garden (not flying over) at any one time. The RSPB provide a sheet to tally up results and send in to them so they can get their number crunchers beavering away on the rersults. This fantastic event enables bird lovers across the UK to help give the RSPB a vital snapshot of the UK’s birds each winter. The RSPB men in white jackets (or scientists as they preferred to be called! 🙂 can then use the information and patterns in bird numbers to help prioritise their bird conservation work.
Did you take part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch – if so we’d love to hear how you got on! You may also have found it a great way to get back in touch with nature and indeed birds – why not cement this with an RSPB membership? It will provide you with all of the below – but also a great way to help fund the great work carried out by the RSPB in protecting wildlife and the surrounding naturla habitat.
RSPB Membership Benefits :
- FREE entry to over 100 RSPB nature reserves
- 15 months for the price of 12 when paid by direct debit
- FREE gift
- BIRDS magazine delivered quarterly
- A great welcome pack
