About Big Garden Birdwatch

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.

For the past 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 you.

The Big Garden Birdwatch has never been more important than it is today, with the results from half a million of you (that's 280,00 gardens surveyed, which is rather a lot!) helping us create a 'snapshot' picture of bird numbers in each region, showing us 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.

These surveys, therefore, help us spot problems, but more importantly, are also the first step to help aid a species recovery.

But we mustn't forget that Big Garden Birdwatch is also fun, easy and only takes an hour.

If you're one of our regulars – welcome back, and thanks for what you're doing. If you're new to this, you might wonder why we do it the way we do, so here goes;

Why is the Big Garden Birdwatch in winter? It's cold!

That's precisely why we do it in January. The cold weather brings birds into our gardens, looking for food and shelter, so it's pretty much the best time of the year for watching garden birds.

Ok, but why do I only have to count for an hour?

What is great about this survey is the amount of people who do it. We'd rather have half a million people watching for an hour, than fewer people watching for two or three hours.

So should I do my count at a particular time of day?

No. Any time is fine, although you will see more birds if you get up early! The time of day won't affect the overall results as the differences in bird numbers are evened out by the large number of gardens surveyed.

What about the weather?

The weather varies between years and also across the UK during each Big Garden Birdwatch weekend. Don't worry – because it's so random it doesn't affect the results in the long term.

What happens if I didn't see any birds?

Don't worry, please send your results in anyway. It all counts, even if there was nothing to count. Surveys are as much about what's missing as what's there. Some people see fewer birds than usual during their hour, but others see more than usual – so they balance each other out.

From youthful beginnings

In the late 1970s, we asked our junior membership to count the birds in their garden over the same weekend. This 'one-off' idea was so successful it has been a regular event since 1979.

Find out more as Gemma Rogers talks to Peter Holden, the creator of Big Garden Birdwatch;