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How to take part in Migration Watch

Taking part in Migration Watch is easy and fun. There are a series of simple forms for you to fill in which will give us information about you, the sites where you go birdwatching, the time you go birdwatching and most importantly the birds you see! Migration Watch will measure the progress of migration both by mapping the distributions of migrants on a daily basis and by measuring the proportion of the walks from each region that include the species of interest. All we need is a list of the species that you saw during a birdwatching visit to a particular site (even your garden). Any counts that you would like to contribute will help us to build up a more complete picture of Spring Migration.

 

To participate in Migration Watch you need to do the following:

1. Read the instructions on this web site, or download the instructions for printing or reading offline if you prefer.
2. Choose at least one site where you will collect records (more can be added later).
3. Choose which one of our bird lists you will use (you can change later if you wish)
4. Go birdwatching and note all the species that you see from your chosen list.
5. Go to the Migration Watch web site and register as a Migration Watch observer.
6. Enter the location and county of your chosen site(s).
7. Enter the date and time of your walk and the site that you visited.
8. Check off the species that you saw on the displayed list.

Cley photograph © Dawn BalmerThat's all there is to it. In addition to standard site visits we also welcome casual records of early arrivals and unusual species. We hope that you will have great fun participating in Migration Watch and that you will return to the Migration Watch web site frequently to enter more data and to find out which migrants are being recorded in your area and around the country. All these results will be updated every night during the Migration Watch period. In addition to viewing national and regional summaries you will be able to view all of your own information and to compare it with the regional figures.

We recommend that you read through the instruction pages in order to gain a clear overview of what the project is about. Once you have read each page click the "next - …" link at the bottom to continue.

Next - How to register


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Migration Watch is organised jointly by the BTO and BirdWatch Ireland
Contact Migration Watch    Last updated 20 January, 2004

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Migration Watch sponsored by:
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