RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch event is coming up fast – the weekend of  24th – 26th January 2025. 
 
 
This is the world’s largest garden wildlife survey and helps the RSPB count the number and diversity of bird species across the UK.  It’s open to members and non-members and provides an excellent opportunity for households to engage in citizen science to aid conservation and make a real impact on scientific research.

Dirleton Community Involvement

Dan Arnold has been working with Dirleton School and Heriot-Watt university to set up a local project based on the RSPB Big Watch.

The survey offers an excellent opportunity to collect local data from across the village and assess the welfare of our birdlife.

The project would like to obtain a copy of your RSPB results to use in the village as part of a biology project with the school. This project will educate the children about nature’s diversity, basic spatial statistics, and foster an appreciation for birds and wildlife. For the village, this will allow us to evaluate how our biodiversity is faring, identifying areas where it is thriving.

How to take part

  1. Sign up for the RSPB bird watch and carry it out over the weekend of the 24th.  It takes 1 hour, and it’s fun to sit and watch and see what turns up.  All the instructions are on the RSPB website, linked here.  
  2. Keep a copy of your observations.  We’ll be sharing a link to a form and database hosted at Heriot-Watt University to collect our local observations.  Please share your data on here too so we can make use of it.  We only want your bird survey data and where you live, so minimal data, and we will only use it for this school project.
 

There will be other activities over the next few weeks and months, some of which you could help with, including making bird feeders and bird boxes.  More will come on this in future emails.

The details for the Heriot-Watt data collection form will be published here very shortly