From the RSPB-

If like us, you love birds and want to help them, then the Big Garden Birdwatch is your chance to do something that really counts.

For the past 30 years, we've been asking our supporters to count the birds in their garden. During this time, more than 3 million hours have been clocked up watching and enjoying the birds that visit our gardens (that's more than 380 years!), and every year, some 6 million birds are spotted by you.

The Big Garden Birdwatch has never been more important than it is today, with the results from half a million of you (that's 280,00 gardens surveyed, which is rather a lot!) helping us create a 'snapshot' picture of bird numbers in each region, showing us that some of our birds are disappearing in scary numbers.

We've lost more than half our house sparrows, and three-quarters of our starlings, and your results have certainly helped highlight these dramatic declines.

These surveys, therefore, help us spot problems, but more importantly, are also the first step to help aid a species recovery.

But we mustn't forget that Big Garden Birdwatch is also fun, easy and only takes an hour.

If you're one of our regulars – welcome back, and thanks for what you're doing. If you're new to this, you might wonder why we do it the way we do, so here goes;

more here...

This year, people all over the UK count birds in their garden for an hour on weekends from 2010th You can learn more about participation in the large garden Birdwatcher on the website of the RSPB . If you are, photographs of garden birds with this group in the UK - we will be a gallery of 10 pictures of our favorite, followed by a vote asking web visitors Guardian vote for their favorite.