Count The Birds In Your Garden To Help The RSPB
It’s as simple as sitting in your own front room with a cup of tea watching the birds!
What could be a better way of finding out if your efforts to create an eco friendly wildlife garden are working than to record the wildlife that visits it?
Starting with the birds is the best way to start your surveying as they are the most obvious and easy to identify of your garden visitors during daylight hours!
Yes we can all identify a hedgehog and a fox, but you have to stay up late in the cold to do that! Birds come out when the sun is shining and you are wide awake! What could be easier?
Why Count Birds?
The RSPB survey takes place every year - as it has done since 1979. Joining in this survey will not only help you to identify more and more of your garden visitors, but it will also allow you to take part in national efforts to record and protect our native species and migrant visitors.
It will also help you to gauge the avian diversity of your garden and local neighbourhood - and help you to choose your feeding sites and foods better; for example blackbirds generally feed on the ground, robins would like a bit of animal protein in their diet and blue tits would love some niger seed from a feeder!
If you know which species are around your garden, you can tailor what you offer them. Not only will this help you attract those birds that you like to see, but could help you see a much wider variety of species throughout the year if you make a few changes.
The Survey:
Added to your own pleasure of watching the birds, you could also be helping the RSPB to extend their knowledge of species distribution and to watch out for serious changes in species number. Some birds are key indicator species for certain habitats, so watching their numbers increase or decline could make a big difference.
And, the RSPB can’t be everywhere at one time - they rely on people like you and me to spare them an hour of their day at the end of January 2010 to count everyday birds.
You don’t have to be an expert like Chris Packham or Bill Oddie - you just need to be able to count the most common birds in your garden.
The RSPB offer a guide to identifying some of the species that you are likely to see on their website - and a review of these and a few practice watches should help you to get the basics under your belt.
If you can tell a robin from a blackbird and a blue tit from a magpie then you are good enough!
And, if you want to get the kids involved at school, then check out the details for info packs and guidelines for schools!
