For the past 14 years, we’ve been asking young people to count the birds in their school grounds, helping create a ‘snapshot’ picture of bird numbers in the UK. We can then create an overview of which birds are making the most of school grounds across the UK. As bird populations are a good indication of the health of an ecosystem, your results can highlight problems affecting the wider environment. If one school reports seeing fewer birds than last year, this could just be due to local factors – such as the weather, or a new building on site – that is keeping the birds away. But if lots of surveys come back saying that they saw fewer of a specific bird, alarm bells would start to ring with our scientists. We would then start trying to work out what was happening, and come up with a plan to help.
How to get involved
Visit the ‘how to take part’ webpage: https://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/discoverandlearn/schoolswatch/how.aspx.