Imagine your local cafe, pub or social hub.
You can sit down with your friends, chat about your day, show them photos and maybe even sit down in a quiet corner and read the paper. Sound good? Well, our friendly online Community is a lot like that! It’s your place to share your experiences of wildlife and the natural world. Let me introduce you what we’ve got to offer and how you can get involved...
Getting started
Have a browse of what’s already on here – that’ll give you a good idea of the sort of things people talk about, read about and share. If you’ve submitted Big Garden Birdwatch results this year, or previously, and created a username and password you’ll be able to use these to log in and start getting involved. If you haven’t then you can register quickly and easily. Plus it’s free!
So once you’re there, what is there to look forward to?
Forums
The forums are the place to talk about stuff. Anything really – as long as it is nature-themed. If you’re not sure what you’re seen, post a picture to our identification forum, talk about your garden in the wildlife in your garden thread, or visit the tea rooms for a chat with others. The best thing to do is to have a browse, see what’s going on and then take the plunge.
There’s loads of friendly contributors who’ll help you out. Plus a team of RSPB moderators from our incredibly knowledgeable Wildlife Enquiries team are on hand to answer any questions.
Blogs
Written by RSPB staff and volunteers, these often give the inside story on a particular issue. From our investigations team giving you the lowdown on the sadly all too frequent cases of wildlife crime, through Director of Conservation Martin Harper’s blog with insights into the big policy issues of the day, right through to this blog, Notes on Nature, sharing my team’s experience with the natural world.
As well as these there are blogs from our reserves, but I’ll talk about these in a minute or two.
There’s plenty to read, and comment on. All bloggers love comments, whether you agree, disagree or have seen something similar. You can read the blogs without logging in, but if log in and you can comment until your heart’s content.
Groups
Most of our groups are based on reserves, so for example you’ll find a Minsmere group, a Loch Garten Ospreys group, a Conwy group etc etc. These combine both forums and blogs, so it’s your place to catch up with what’s been happening on your favourite reserve recently, share photos from your most recent trip, or plan your next one. The reserve staff and volunteers keep these up to date, but it would be great if you could get involved too.
Have a go
So that’s the community in a nutshell – sounds exciting, huh? If you need any further help, have a quick read of Ian’s (one of our moderators) quick guide. So what are you waiting for – dive right in...
Let me know if you have any queries, and I’ll do my best to help out.
For more on our science, check out the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science web pages.
Hi Elizabeth,
Are there any other feeders in your garden? And do the birds use those? If they are then it might just take them a while to get used to the window feeder, or it could be something about the siting of it that the birds don’t like. You could maybe try a different window?
I hope that's helpful. Maybe try the Feeding garden birds forum thread? www.rspb.org.uk/.../14005.aspx, some other Community users may have had similar experiences.
Let me know how you get on!
Kevin
For Christmas my brother very kindly gave me a little feeder for attaching to a window and a big bag of wild bird seed containing wheat, sunflower seeds, millet, kibled maize, dari, oats and vegetable oil. Unfortunately the birds aren't interested - where am I going wrong?