Nationale Tuinvogeltelling 2027

The Nationale Tuinvogeltelling is the Dutch national garden bird count, a January weekend when households across the country spend half an hour writing down the birds outside their window. The next edition runs from Friday 29 to Sunday 31 January 2027. It is organised by Vogelbescherming Nederland, the national bird protection society, which has organised it since 2001.

You do not need to be an expert and you do not need to go anywhere. The counting happens in your own garden or on your balcony, you do it once at a time that suits you during the three days, and you submit your totals online afterwards. Vogelbescherming turns the combined submissions into an annual picture of how common garden birds are faring, with results broken down by region and by municipality.

What taking part involves

The commitment is a single counting session of thirty minutes. Pick a moment somewhere between Friday morning and Sunday evening, settle in with a view of your garden or balcony, and note what you see. Vogelbescherming points out that birds are at their most active early in the morning, so that is usually when there is most to record.

The count is built around ordinary domestic gardens. Submissions are tied to a Dutch address with a valid postcode and house number. Schools have their own arrangement, with a dedicated school counting day, the scholenteldag, set for each edition.

The counting rules

The method is deliberately simple, but two rules do most of the work and are worth understanding before you start.

• Only birds that are actually in your garden or on your balcony count. Birds that merely fly over do not.
• For each species, record the highest number you see at the same moment. You never add up separate sightings, because the same blue tit coming and going repeatedly would otherwise be counted several times over.

Beyond that, there is no need to distinguish between males and females. If you have both a front and a back garden you may count both, applying the same highest-at-one-time rule across them. Vogelbescherming publishes a downloadable paper checklist as a PDF, plus an identification guide to the twenty-five most common Dutch garden birds, which helps if you are still learning to tell a koolmees from a pimpelmees.

Submitting your results

Counts go in through MijnTuinvogeltelling, the organiser’s web app at mijntuinvogeltelling.nl, which files the result against your address.

One thing to get right first time: once a count has been submitted it cannot be edited. If you realise afterwards that you left something out, the remedy is to submit that forgotten species separately rather than to correct the original entry.

The submission window closes shortly after the weekend rather than staying open indefinitely. In the 2026 edition, counts had to be in before 12:00 on Monday 2 February, the day after the counting weekend ended. Check the organiser’s how-it-works page for the 2027 deadline.

What the last count found

The 2026 edition drew 136,903 participants, who between them recorded 1,898,916 birds. The headline result was a change at the top of the table. The koolmees, or great tit, finished first, which meant the huismus (house sparrow) had failed to take first place for the first time in twenty-three years. The pimpelmees, or blue tit, came third.

That is precisely the sort of shift the count exists to pick up. One garden on one morning tells you almost nothing. Close to two million observations gathered on the same weekend, repeated year after year, produce a series that can actually be read for trends.

Why the count exists

Vogelbescherming Nederland uses the submissions to build a yearly overview of garden bird populations by region and by municipality, and that picture informs the organisation’s advice on how garden birds can best be helped. With the first edition held in 2001, the 2027 count adds another year to a record that now stretches back more than two decades.

For anyone who has recently moved to the Netherlands, the weekend doubles as a low-effort introduction to the birds you will genuinely encounter here. The organiser’s guide to the twenty-five commonest garden birds covers the species you are most likely to see, and half an hour at the window is enough to learn a few of them properly.

Common questions

Do I have to count on all three days?

No. You count once, for half an hour, at a moment of your own choosing during the weekend of 29 to 31 January 2027.

Birds fly over my garden constantly. Do they count?

No. Only birds that are present in your garden or on your balcony belong on the form. Flyovers are excluded.

The same robin came back five times. Do I write down five?

No. You record the highest number of that species visible at any single moment, which in that case is one.

What about a shared garden or a nearby park?

The count is designed around your own garden or balcony. Where boundaries are shared or the space is public, Vogelbescherming asks participants to use judgement: consider whether someone else is likely to be counting the same birds, and whether your submission is a realistic sample.

Can I fix a mistake after submitting?

A submitted count cannot be corrected. A species you forgot can be submitted separately.

What happens to my numbers?

They are pooled with every other submission into Vogelbescherming’s annual overview of garden bird populations, reported by region and municipality, which feeds into the organisation’s advice on how garden birds can best be helped.