When I was a small boy (a long, long, long time ago in the last century!) I was a “Young Ornithologist” – that is, someone who watches and studies birds.Bird watching is still one of my favourite pasttimes.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) run a Big Garden Birdwatch every year where they encourage people to identify and count the birds in their garden for an hour sometime on the last weekend of January.

This is a great opportunity to learn a bit about the birds that live around you, they are AMAZING! Why not take part?

The RSPB website has some great suggestions to help you attract birds to your garden or window sill and how to identify them. Here are some of the things you can do:

• put out different types of bird food to attract different types of bird (but NOT bread!)
• draw a picture of the birds you see, make a note of their features eg red breast, black eye stripe, shape of their beak, etc
• ask your family or look up birds in a book or on the Internet to help identify them
• see which bird prefers which food
• keep a record of your observations

Do share with us what you find out and we will publish some of your pictures and findings on this blog.

You may see Red Kites flying over your garden but you would be very lucky to have one land in your garden!

Here is a useful leaflet to help you with the more common birds you might see in your garden.