THE BIG Garden Birdwatch takes place this weekend.
Householders are being urged to spend an hour watching the birds in their gardens from Saturday to Monday (January 27 to 29) to help provide the RSPB with its annual snapshot of how the UK’s garden birds are doing.
More than half-a-million people nationwide will be taking part in the world’s biggest wildlife survey, now in its 39th year, before submitting results online.
This year the RSPB is curious to see how these figures will change following a positive year for some resident British birds, such as greenfinch, chaffinch, blue tit, great tit and long-tailed tit.
Numbers of greenfinches have been hit by the disease trichomonosis for the past decade, which has also been documented in other garden birds, such as chaffinch.
More recently there was a downward trend in Big Garden Birdwatch sightings of the tit species, which was thought to be linked to the prolonged wet weather in the 2016 breeding season.
Daniel Hayhow, RSPB conservation scientist, said: “The Big Garden Birdwatch is all about enjoying the wildlife that comes to you and it’s really as simple as spending an hour looking out the window. You don’t need any special equipment.”
Visit www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch for further details.
