Birding Big Day 2025

BirdLife South Africa is excited to announce that BirdLife South Africa’s Birding Big Day (BBD) 2025 will take place on 06 December 2025.

Stay tuned to this page for more details, as additional information will be uploaded in the coming months.

In the meantime, see below information one needs to participate.

Afrit is the 2025 corporate sponsor for Birding Big Day. They are also funding the revision of the Red Data Book for Birds, currently undertaken by BirdLife South Africa. For more information about Afrit please see their website.

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Teams are invited to log their sightings on the mobile app BirdLasser. The sightings will automatically be displayed on a dedicated BirdLasser Birding Big Day event page. In order to participate, one member of the team must enter the data on BirdLasser while birding. The following information must be provided on BirdLife South Africa’s online form:

• The name and email address of the person in the team who will log the sightings on BirdLasser. Please make sure you enter the correct email address, you can find it under the settings menu on the BirdLasser App.
• Team name which will appear on the BirdLasser events page (maximum 25 characters).
• Names of team members.

During the day, the challenge page will automatically update as teams record their sightings, thus adding to the excitement of the day. Progress will be reported in social and other media. For more information about BirdLasser, visit www.birdlasser.com or email support@birdlasser.com.

All participants will be loaded in each of the nine provincial BirdLasser events and scores will be kept as to how many species each team record in a province. Please note this will only be available for teams using BirdLasser and only for teams entering the 50km radius challenge.

You can participate in one of two categories:

50Km Radius Category
The rules for this category are:

• The maximum area that can be visited is an area within a radius of 50km.
• Please note this a RADIUS of 50km – so from boundary to boundary it is 100km.
• Teams registering for this category will automatically be entered into provincial challenges (this will not be the case for the 6km radius category).

6Km Radius Category
The rules for this category are:

• The maximum area that can be visited is an area within a radius of 6km.
• Note this is a RADIUS of 6km – from boundary to boundary the distance is 12km.
• Teams registering in this category will not be automatically entered into provincial challenges. Please email bbd@birdlife.org.za if you want your team to be entered into a provincial challenge. Indicate clearly which provincial challenge. 

If anything is unclear or you need more information, please contact bbd@birdlife.org.za.