Thanks to Sue Hetherington for this item about the Global Bird Weekend, over 2 days on 17-18 October – which is organised by Tim Appleton of Global Birding In association with BirdLife International, eBird and Swarovski Optik.

Tim Appleton was the first warden of Rutland Water and the “inventor” of Birdfair which he organised for many years until “retiring” recently.  Global Birding is his “baby”.  The Weekend is the biggest ever low carbon birdwatching event.  It’s all, of course and as per usual, on its own website https://globalbirding.org/.

In essence, Covid-19 made people more aware of their local natural surroundings.  The event aims to encourage everyone to show their love for nature and birds worldwide in their own local patch.

The October Big Day is aiming at a world record for the largest number of birds seen (over 6,000 species) by the greatest number of people globally.

We hope that at least 25,000 participants will go out Birdwatching on Saturday 17 October 2020 and tell us what they see on this peak migration weekend. To date there have been registrations from over 70 countries.

The aim is to record as many different species of bird as possible, with a target of more than 6,000 bird species. Let us know by recording your sightings on eBird:  https://ebird.org/home

Then on Sunday 18 October take your camera, phone, friends and/or sketch pad to your favourite birdwatching area and share those places with your new Global friends on our social media pages using
#GLOBALBIRDWEEKEND
#GLOBALBIRDING
and upload your images to eBird’s dedicated Global Bird Weekend page. You can still upload your bird sightings to eBird that day too!

The final aim is to raise funds for the birdlife conservation project:  to help stop the illegal trade in birds.

You can click here to register for the world record event.