Residents can become bird watchers

Residents across Stirlingshire are being urged to help secure the future of our garden birds by taking part in a survey.

The RSPB has launched its Big Garden Birdwatch initiative.

It runs from Januray 25 to 27 January 2020 and has done for over its four decades.

In this time nearly nine million hours have been spent watching and reporting on garden birds with more than 137 million birds counted.

RSPB is asking participants to get involved via social media as well as encouraging them to share their stories of how they take part, then will showcase some of the best examples, from building their own birdwatching den, baking wildlife themed cakes and making bird feeders.

Scottish Conservative MidScotland MSP, Alexander Stewart is backing the drive and encourged local people to take up the challenge.

He said:“Just one hour every year, for the last four decades, has made the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch the United Kingdom’s largest garden wildlife citizen science project and during that time, hundreds of thousands of people have volunteered their time, providing the

RSPB with nearly 9 million hours of monitoring garden birds.

“Over the last 40 years, 137 million birds have been counted giving the RSPB an astonishing amount of insight into how our wildlife is faring, allows them to monitor trends, thus helping the society understand how birds are doing.

“With results from so many gardens, they have been able to create a‘snapshot’of bird numbers across the UK.”

Big Garden Birdwatch was one of the first surveys to alert the RSPB to the decline in the number of song thrushes in gardens.