News, features and updates from the RSPB

The arrival of swifts signals the start of summer, but every spring most of us are seeing fewer of these mysterious birds migrate back to our towns and cities. Swift fans across the UK have been taking action to try and help their local swifts make a comeback.

The RSPB has heard from gardeners who found unexpected life sprouting in their flowerpots – baby birds!

Parenting in the bird world is a splendour of different chick-rearing strategies. While some Mother’s Day tropes play on a doting mum caring for her chicks, a scamper through the natural world reveals a surprising and varied reality.

From buzzing boxes to strange hisses, our experts weigh in on the weirdest and most wonderful things they have found in a nest box.

If you have a nestbox or two in your outdoor space, you have already done something brilliant for the birds in your backyard. But to help make it a safer home for them to raise their chicks, it is important to clean it once a year.

From the frisky to the fancy to the faithful – our feathered neighbours' antics are enough to get even the most casual twitcher’s curtains twitching.

With so many nest boxes now on the market, which box should you buy? Here are our top tips…

Every year we are amazed by the variety of photos and videos people send us from their birdwatch, a stunning reflection of the nation’s passion for wildlife. Here are some of our favourites. 

We have never been more aware of how important nature is to our health and wellbeing with many of us turning to it for support, or just a change of scene, over the last two years.

10 million hours! That’s the estimated time that members of the public have spent counting garden birds since the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch first launched in 1979, with over a million taking part in 2021, making it the world’s largest wildlife survey.

It’s a brand new year! But what will it bring? Maybe you fancy a sneak or a spy, or possibly to shout – not at the birds, but for the birds. Here are our ten recommended things to do in ‘22 for nature, and for you. 

Not everyone has an encyclopaedic knowledge of birdlife and even keen birders may not have gotten into their stride before adulthood. But most of us are taught at a young age how to identify a robin.