Last year almost 80,000 people in our region took part in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. Emily Kench of the nature charity presents a taster for this year's event.

Big Garden Birdwatch is almost here. Last year, more than 76,000 people in the East, and close to half a million people nationally, joined in with the world's largest garden wildlife survey, counting more than eight million birds.

Over just one hour, on either the Saturday Janaury 27, Sunday January 28, or Monday January 29, we need you once again to sit back, relax and enjoy recording the birds in your garden – the best bit? You don't need to be an expert to take part!

All the information that you accumulate gives us a comprehensive snapshot of how our garden birds are doing.

It's more than birds though: we want to know about the other wildlife you've seen in your garden throughout the year, so look out for badgers, foxes, grey squirrels, red squirrels, muntjac, roe deer, frogs and toads.

If you ask us 'which birds will I see?', the simple answer is: we don't know! We can't predict which birds you will see in your garden, which is one of the joys of taking part in Big Garden Birdwatch. You might see your usual visitors, or you might see a rarity, but you won't know unless you take part.

For instance, Big Garden Birdwatch 2017 revealed an explosion in the number of recorded sightings of waxwings, a more unusual garden visitor. These attractive-looking birds flock to UK gardens in winter once every seven to eight years, known as an 'irruption', when the berry crop fails in their native Scandinavia.

Yet, more familiar tit species took a hit last year, and were seen in a lot less of our gardens following weather changes throughout the year.

In 2017, some familiar garden birds topped the charts, which you might see in your gardens once again this year:

1 House Sparrow - noisy and gregarious little birds, weighing in at between 24-40g. They are cheerful exploiters of man's rubbish and wastefulness, having managed to colonise most of the wild: the ultimate avian opportunist perhaps.

2 Starling - at a distance starlings look black, but when you see them closer they are very glossy with a sheen of purples and greens. Their flight is fast and direct and they walk and run confidently on the ground. Each starling weighs about 75g. Starlings spend a lot of the year in flocks.

3 Blackbird - males live up to their name but, confusingly, females are brown often with spots and streaks on their breasts. The bright orange-yellow beak and eye-ring make adult male blackbirds striking. Both sexes weigh between 80-100g.

4 Woodpigeon - the UK's largest and commonest pigeon weighing in at 450g. It is largely grey with a white neck patch and white wing patches, clearly visible in flight. Although shy in the countryside it can be tame and approachable in towns and cities, and nearly 5,400,000 pairs breed here in the UK. Its cooing call is a familiar sound in woodlands as is the loud clatter of its wings when it flies away.

5 Blue tit - a colourful mix of blue, yellow, white and green makes the blue tit one of our most attractive and most recognisable garden visitors. In winter, family flocks join up with other tits as they search for food; they are a relatively small tit weighing about 11g. A garden with four or five blue tits at a feeder at any one time may actually be feeding 20 or more.

6 Collared dove - pale, pinky-brown grey coloured birds, with a distinctive black neck collar (as the name suggests). They have deep red eyes and reddish feet. Their monotonous cooing is a familiar sound to many and it's easy to mistake them for a woodpigeons, however they are a lot smaller than a woodpigeon.

7 Goldfinch - a highly-coloured finch with a bright red face and yellow wing patch. Sociable, often breeding in loose colonies, they have a delightful liquid twittering song and call. Their long fine beaks allow them to extract otherwise inaccessible seeds from thistles and teasels. They are very small, weighing around 16g. Increasingly they are visiting bird tables and feeders.

8 Robin - the UK's favourite bird - with its bright red breast it is familiar throughout the year and especially at Christmas! Males and females look identical, and are of a similar size weighing 16-22g. Young birds have no red breast and are spotted with golden brown.

9 Great tit - the largest UK tit, weighing around 16g – is green and yellow with a striking glossy black head with white cheeks and a distinctive two-syllable song. It is a woodland bird which has readily adapted to man-made habitats to become a familiar garden visitor. It can be quite aggressive at a bird table, fighting off smaller tits. In winter it joins with blue tits and others to form roaming flocks which scour gardens and countryside for food.

10 Long-tailed tit - easily recognisable birds with distinctive colouring, long-tailed tits look like a ball on a stick with long tails (bigger than their body) and small bodies. Gregarious and noisy residents, long-tailed tits are most usually noticed in small, excitable flocks of about 20 birds.

For your free Big Garden Birdwatch pack, which includes a bird identification chart, plus RSPB shop voucher and advice to help you attract wildlife to your garden, text BIRD to 70030 or visit www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch