NATURE lovers in Helensburgh and Lomond are being encouraged to sign up for this year’s Big Garden Birdwatch.

Organised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the 2020 version of the world’s largest wildlife survey takes place from Saturday, January 25, to Monday, January 27.

The charity is urging local residents to spend an hour watching and recording the birds in their garden or local green space and then send in their results.

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Rebecca Munro, director of communications at RSPB, said: “With nearly half-a-million people now regularly taking part, coupled with 40 years’ worth of data, Big Garden Birdwatch allows us to monitor trends and helps us understand how birds are doing.

“With results from so many gardens, we are able to create a ‘snapshot’ of bird numbers across the UK.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have volunteered their time over the past four decades for the largest garden wildlife citizen science project, providing the RSPB with nearly nine million hours of monitoring garden birds.

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The house sparrow was the most seen garden bird last year, with more than 1.2 million recorded sightings in 2019.

To register for the 2020 Big Garden Birdwatch, visit www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch.

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