BirdLife organises a bird spotting event in your own garden this weekend (25-26.1.2014). Everyone is welcome to join without signing up or paying an entrance fee. Last year more than 19 000 people in more than 12 400 gardens participated in the event!
The idea is to spend one hour in the garden during the weekend. During the hour you need to recognise the birds you spot, count how many birds of the same species are at once to be seen, and report your findings by Jan 31st either by filling in an online form or by sending a post card with the findings to BirdLife Suomi, Annankatu 29 A 16, 00100 Helsinki. Remember to write your name and address as well the address and time of the spotting and the number of bird spotters present.
You are very welcome to report your findings in the comments of this blog as well!
The overall results in Finland are continuously updated.
There will be a lottery among all the participants, and among others 1 weeks accommodation for 4 people on Ylläs are to be won.
* Roughly the same information will be found in Finnish and Swedish on BirdLife’s homepage.
—
I think I’d be quite keen on participating unless I wouldn’t suck on both spotting AND recognising birds. Even my 3 yo knows to ask for the phone to call her grandmother when she wants to know what anything beyond a chicken is… However, if my kids were at school studying birds, I think the event would be a great way of supporting their school work. Maybe I’ll have to take the challenge then?
PS Since I started this blog, I have to say that it has been very entertaining to pay more attention to all the free events out there that I failed to notice before. If you want to read about the annual free events we have participated in, take a look at the page Free Events.
Free But Fun 
Great idea! I think bird spotting, watching is pretty poplular here in Hungary too 🙂 But I am like you, I do not recognize them, I am an anti talentum, same way with the trees… Which is a shame because I am biologist 😦 I will know sooner the latin name of something, then recognize it…
Quite funny that you know the latin names but may not recognise them when you see them! Sounds very academical (we used to joke that the most important thing we learned dyring our years at uni was to find information that actually matters in real life 😉 )At least I don’t feel so bad now about my poor knowledge now when I am not the only one!
Gute Idee, bei uns -8 keine vögel und der kleine schrei und schreit!!ehhhhh. Sag mal wie kann ich , hmm wie sagt man es auf deutsch subscribe your posts??
Es gibt eine alternative deine E-Mail Adresse eingeben und ‘follow’ auf dem Frontpage zu drücken (auf dem Handy siehst du diese Alternative nicht), und da bekommst du immer ein E-Mail wenn ich etwas gesandt habe. Diese Stelle ist immer auf der rechten Seite wenn du etwas runter scrollst, nach die Archive.
I had a search for Latvian cock on my blog today but I don’t think they meant the bird variety… 😉
Lol!
I’m with you, I only recognize the most popular and obvious ones!
Lucky I’m not the only one.
It’s a great idea! But it’s for Finland specifically (not wherever)?
I think once they can do their own research all these activities we don’t know much about will definitely be easier! Meanwhile, getting outside and spotting birds has to be fun even if you can’t identify them.
I know what you mean about taking more notice of certain events 🙂
Yes, this event is only in Finland but why don’t you make the association confused by sending in some birds spotted in Singapore? 😉 more seriously, I think they actually are using the findings to see which birds are here this winter or something like that.
But you are right, it would be easy to do this anyway, or even once in a while, could be fun for the kids and at least I would learn something!
This is such a cool idea. I have no idea what kinds of birds are in these parts, but it gets me and z outside and looking. We can always check into the kinds they are later maybe. Thanks for letting is know about this! And Happy Bird Watching!
Let me know what you spot in Thailand, interesting! But you may create some confusion if you send in your findings on the online form, as that actually is for Finland 🙂 but nothing stops anyone to do the same thing where ever you are!
Yeah, we will probably just perform the task without sending in our findings. That would be quite confusing for the people checking the forms… Where did this bird come from? Hahah