Keep an eye on our feathered friends
THE British Trust for Ornithology’s summer project gives families a great reason to watch garden birds together, and the chance to win a pair of compact binoculars for the best garden bird drawing.
Garden BirdWatch is a scientific project that monitors birds in gardens, but it’s also a great activity for families to do together.
The project involves watching, counting, drawing and writing, and is open to children aged five to 11.
BTO’s Garden BirdWatch is a weekly wildlife survey which has been running for 25 years, with 20,000 active members.
Through the survey, BTO scientists have been able to see the changing fortunes of garden wildlife, helping to understand how
gardens can be made friendlier and more beneficial for wildlife.
Through this project families can learn to identify garden birds, and will notice the patterns in their gardens, such as which birds feed in groups or on their own or what food they prefer to eat, and will report all of this information back to BTO.
At the end of the summer BTO are asking children to take a look back at their counts, and to draw a picture and write a sentence about the bird they have seen most often.
The best pictures will be shared on the Garden BirdWatch website, and the very best will win a prize of a pair of compact Opticron Savanna binoculars, with ten runners-up receiving a Gardman Paint Your Own feeder to hang in the garden.
We are excited to share BTO Garden BirdWatch with families and can’t wait to see the information and the drawings submitted to us.
By showing how important and exciting our garden wildlife is, we hope that their fascination will carry on into adulthood, fostering an interest in nature and the importance of environmental science.
Share your picture with us by Sunday September 6, see www.bto.org/gardenbirdwatchdrawing-competition for details.
Debbie Lee British Trust for Ornithology