DE-STRESS with the world’s biggest bird survey.

The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch 2018 needs your input.

The last weekend of January sees the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch get under way and the conservation charity is asking everyone to share details of the birds that live around them.

Sightings from previous years helped identify the dramatic decline of house sparrows, leading to urgent studies to try to save the species from catastrophic failure.

But the survey is not all doom and gloom and it can even help participants relax and de-stress.

When was the last time you allowed yourself an hour to simply look at the nature around you? Here in the south east we’re already seeing our birds respond to climate change and the Big Garden Birdwatch gives us insights into the private spaces our researchers can’t reach. So lose yourself in nature for 60 minutes.

Apart from benefiting from an hour connecting with nature, participants will also be part of the world’s biggest citizen science project for the environment. The Big Garden Birdwatch has been running now for nearly 40 years.

For the RSPB, the data gathered is like gold dust. It provides a snapshot of the state of the UK’s garden birds county by county. In London’s case the data can be broken down by local authority borough.

This year the RSPB is curious to see how figures will change following a positive year for some of our resident British birds, such as greenfinch, chaffinch, blue tit, great tit and long-tailed tit. Numbers of greenfinches have been impacted by Trichomonosis for the last decade and the disease has 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. However, 2017 was drier, fuelling speculation that 2018 could bring bumper sightings.

There is a deadly serious side to the survey but it’s great fun to do and always a delight to see the incredibly diverse range of creatures getting on with their lives under our noses; normally ignored or overlooked.

The RSPB is asking people to choose a moment suitable to them at any point over Saturday, Sunday or Monday (27 to 29 January) to record the maximum number of each species of bird they see at any one time over the hour from their home, then submit the results online or by post.

No expert knowledge or kit is required. There are FREE identification sheets and full instructions available from the charity’s webpage www.

rspb.org.uk/birdwatch Show your support for the Big Garden Birdwatch by wearing one of the RSPB’s many pin badges of UK wildlife and share images on our social media channels using the hashtag: #sharehowyouwear.

Tim Webb, communications officer, RSPB