Join the Team SWAROVSKI OPTIK on October 14th, 2023 to find as many birds as we can. We will be joining tens of thousands of birdwatchers trying to find as many birds as possible in gardens and wild areas around the globe. And it doesn’t matter if you just record the blackbirds and tits in your garden, or if you spend the day trying to break a personal record – every bird observation counts and will help scientists and conservationists understand the state of the world’s birds.
This is all part of one of the largest birding events ever the October Big Day.
What you will need to do:
1. Download the eBird app on your phone and register yourself
2. When you start looking for birds on Saturday, open the eBird app and click “Start Checklist”
3. Add any bird species you find and try to guess or estimate the number of individuals per species you see or hear
4. Get help identifying birds from an app like Merlin Bird ID (free)
5. When you are finished birding at that site and would like to move location or stop birding, press “Stop”
6. You will then need to add some additional information. Pressing the green stopwatch symbol in the middle will calculate the total minutes you were birding and if you allowed location tracking then the distance you travelled will automatically be there. If you did not allow location services, you will need to select either Travelling or Stationary, and make an estimate of the distance you covered if you were moving.
7. Now you need to click on the green person symbol under Observers, and “Share checklist with…” before typing Team SWAROVSKI OPTIK and pressing Done. This will automatically share your checklist with our team.
8. When you press Continue, you will be asked to choose a location. Here you can either just click “Use this location” or – if you are in an area that is regularly birded – click on the map tab and select the closest orange flame symbol closest to you.
9. You should now be able to submit the list, and you are done. As we submit lists, they will all be tallied on our Team SWAROVSKI OPTIK page here.
10. Take some photos of yourself birding on the day and share them on social media tagging @swarovskioptik.birding (Facebook) or @swarovskioptik_birding (Instagram). We will also be using the hashtag #gobirding
