Ornithologist Gerard Brinkman of Castricum, North Holland, has set up a website to help people in the Netherlands find out what kind of bird they saw but don’t know its name. The website, ‘welke vogel is dit’ (‘what bird is this’) helps people identify a bird in three steps. First, what does it look like, then what is its main colour and possible group, then from a list you get to see what could be your bird. Yes it’s in Dutch, so brush up on that as well while you’re at it.

The online bird watching with webcams from 2010 is still online.

(Link: www.rtvnh.nl, Photo of Iago Sparrow by Hans Zwitzer, some rights reserved)