Garden BirdWatch

Written by Charley, Dec 2024

Coal tit on peanut feeder

Do you enjoy watching birds in your garden? If so, you could make your hobby count, by keeping a record of which species you see each week and submitting the data to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)!

I set this survey up with volunteers at Hazel Hill Wood in 2021 and Perlins Community Project in 2022. Earlier this year, I finally had my own garden to record in! It’s a lovely way to connect with your garden wildlife – not just birds, you can record mammals and invertebrates too!

From the BTO website…

Help with research into garden wildlife by joining the Garden BirdWatch community.

BTO has run the year-round Garden BirdWatch scheme since 1995, and thousands of people across the UK contribute their sightings each week.
Gardens are really important habitats for wildlife, but we need to understand how and why populations of garden birds and other wildlife are changing, and how we can help them.
You can help by keeping a simple list and telling us which species visit each week, helping us learn about how wildlife uses the food, shelter and other resources in our gardens.
The more we can understand about how birds and animals use our gardens, the more we can improve our cities, towns, villages and individual gardens for wildlife.
Sign up for Garden BirdWatch!