The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch results 2024: Gardens can play key role in nature’s recovery.

The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch results 2024: Gardens can play key role in nature’s recovery. - RSPB

House Sparrows top the charts once more as the number one bird spotted in UK gardens.
This year over six hundred thousand people across the UK took part, counting more than 9.5 million birds.
Big Garden Birdwatch is the world’s largest garden wildlife survey and shows the importance of the nation’s gardens for wildlife and what you can do to help.

The latest results from this year’s Big Garden Birdwatch have revealed that House Sparrow has once again held on to the top spot for another year, with Blue Tit riding high at number two and Starling coming in at number three. Woodpigeon and Blackbird make up the remainder of the top five most recorded species.

Starling, a glossy dark brown bird with lots of bright white speckles, sitting on top of a twiggy hedge — Starling Sturnus vulgaris, adult male in hedge of Wild privet (photo: Andy Hay, rspb-images.com)

Over six hundred thousand people joined in the world’s largest garden wildlife survey counting more than nine and a half million birds of 80 species during this year’s RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, once again highlighting the importance of our gardens for the nation’s wildlife.

The UK’s gardens are an increasingly important habitat for many species. These places are often overlooked and taken for granted but cover an estimated 4,330 square kilometres. In England alone, the land area given over to gardens is more than four and a half times larger than that of our National Nature Reserves.

Big Garden Birdwatch is the world’s largest garden wildlife survey and gives the RSPB insights into how some of our most common garden birds are faring.

The Starling provides the perfect example. These colourful, characterful birds can be found across the UK and their numbers increase dramatically during the winter months when birds arrive from northern Europe – just in time for Big Garden Birdwatch - but despite coming in at number three in this year’s survey, this species is on the UK Red List of most threatened species due to a sharp decline since the 1960s in its breeding population. Gardens remain an important refuge for this species and even small actions can benefit birds like Starlings as well as a wealth of other garden wildlife.