This weekend we flocked to our local parks, gardens and the riverside to take part in the RSPB's annual Big Garden Birdwatch. Across the country the nature charity has already had nearly 5 million sightings, including 672,736 house sparrows and 553,744 blue tits topping the charts. Results can be submitted to the RSPB until February 18th so there's plenty of time to log yours.

Here is a summary of what GoodGymmers in Richmond, Kingston and beyond saw on their watch.

Marie Noelle and Jade - What a great way to spend an hour on such a lovely morning. Sadly no birds have landed yet here but that might be down to the sleeping fox!

Lily - Quite a few sparrows in my garden, living in beech trees. Counted six but there were more hiding further in.

Ken - Sky (my youngest daughter) and I went to the White Cross Pub to do the RSPB Bird Watch. We counted 188 birds! (It is a really good spot!). We had 51 Black headed gulls, 36 rock doves (AKA pigeons!), 21 herring gulls, 16 mallards, 12 Canada Geese, and then handfuls of others (Mandarin ducks, moorhen, mute swans, heron, parakeets, and cross between a domestic duck mallard duck). Eleven different species in total.

Charlotte - I was in Richmond Park where I could hear and see a lot of birds. Particularly crows and parakeets.

Rachel - None of the birds stayed long enough for me to take a photo but I saw 4 blue tits, 1 sparrow, 1 robin, 1 thrush, 2 pigeons and 2 jackdaw.

Jassy - Just one robin holding the fort.

Adam, Rosie, Sam, Africa, Chris, Jp and Teresa made it back-to-back GG sessions after a morning leaf clearing task. We walked over to Moormead Park and took a pew on a perfectly circular bench for 360° views. But even with the guide sheets that eager beaver Rosie had printed off, identifying the different species on a bright yet wintry morning proved challenging for us novice twitchers. Still, we counted gold-, green- and chaffinch, a pair of blackbirds, magpies and plenty of woodpigeon.

Teresa - I was very excited to spot every bird that landed and eagerly called over Sam with his binoculars to inspect and identify the right bird. A very enjoyable morning with a spot of sunshine and the birds.

Thanks to Claire for sending pics and summaries from your GG Kingston friends.

In a very different Community Mission, we met with other volunteers and task owners Ken and Philip at Richmond Bridge, just as night was about to fall. First timers Immi, Ollie and Charlotte joined us for this special task.

Our mission was to survey bats. We were taken through an introduction to the task, given bat detectors and shown how to identify one key species of bat each over the course of the night.

As a group we then followed our bat leaders to survey both sides of the River Thames for 2km upriver of Richmond Bridge. We stopped every 100m for two minutes to listen for our target bat species calls on our detectors.

As the sunset and it got dark, we were soon counting bats left, right and centre. We easily identified six species of bats and we counted several hundred in just over 40 minutes of surveying. The data was all recorded and will be verified later for publication by the Bat Conservation Trust. This data helps to learn more about how we can protect these incredible mammals. It is a scientific study which adds a whole new talent to our GoodGym skills! We also learned that one bat can eat over 1,000 mosquitoes in a night, they work hard too!

Ken and Philip thanked us all at the end and we went on our own way into the night, wondering how many bats were flying around that we never seem to see.