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Watching birds and listening to birdsong have helped people during the pandemic, polling suggests in the run-up to the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
The wildlife charity is expecting high levels of participation in its annual survey of garden birds this weekend, which has been running for 42 years, and is encouraging people to take part to help “lift spirits” in the latest lockdown.
A survey for the RSPB by YouGov ahead of the Big Garden Birdwatch reveals that nearly two thirds of those polled (63%) felt watching birds and hearing their song added to their enjoyment of life, especially in the last 12 months.
There, I’ve said it in print. It’s a legacy, I think, of a rural childhood, though it’s also fed by that (very male) desire to catalogue, collect and identify, added to which birds are just, well, amazing. And beautiful. And so varied. And of course they can fly, which is cool, and eat worms, which isn’t cool but is still sort of impressive. Many of the books I’ve owned the longest are about birds, which means they date back to at least the mid-1970s. My favourites are Bird Spotting, written by John Holland and illustrated by Rein Stuurman (my hardback 1973 edition cost a mighty £1.25, so it must have been a birthday present), and The Observer’s Book Of Birds’ Eggs (75p the cost of the 1974 thirteenth reprint). Since then I’ve acquired others such as the Collins Bird Guide and the indispensable Collins Garden Birds.