While human society has come to a standstill,  birds are in a frenzy, defending territories, finding mates, building nests and feeding young!  It’s a good time to watch birds wherever you live and people spending a lot of time at home might be interested in joining the British Trust for Ornithology’s Garden Birdwatch.  This is a year round project unlike the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch in January.  The BTO has lots of excellent bird identification videos – calls and song as well as film – for those wanting to improve their knowledge.

There is plenty of scope too for people to take photographs and let other residents what birds are around and what they are doing.

Do you love watching you garden birds? If so, we’ve got a great offer for you.

You can now join the BTO Garden BirdWatch community for free!

During the lockdown, many of us are looking to our gardens to enjoy nature and be outdoors, to learn, and to improve our well-being. BTO Garden BirdWatch offers a great opportunity to learn more about garden birds and other wildlife, and to contribute directly to BTO’s important scientific research on the value of gardens for wildlife.

By understanding more about how wildlife uses our gardens, we’ll be able to make our cities, towns, villages and individual gardens better for nature.

To take part you simply keep a list of the birds you see visiting your garden over the course of a week, then enter this into our online recording system. If you want, you can also record other garden wildlife, such as butterflies and mammals.

Your sightings will help us to understand how and why populations of garden birds and other wildlife are changing, and how we can all help them.

This free offer includes access to our online recording system, a regular Garden BirdWatch e-newsletter with information on recording and identifying garden wildlife, and access to our team of wildlife experts to answer your questions on garden wildlife.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Garden BirdWatch community.