The new edition of the Ornitho-Swarovski Challenge officially started on 1 October and will run throughout the 2026–2027 season. This initiative aims to encourage birdwatching and promote the collection of biodiversity data through the Ornitho platforms.

How can you take part?

Taking part is easy! All you have to do is submit complete bird observation lists of at least 30 minutes on Ornitho. You can submit your lists via the websites Ornitho.cat and Ornitho.ad, or through the NaturaList mobile app.

Every complete list you submit contributes to our knowledge and monitoring of bird populations while giving you the chance to win some fantastic prizes.

What are the prizes?

The challenge offers monthly prizes and a grand prize:

• Monthly prize: every month, one winner will receive a €50 voucher to spend at the Oryx shop.

• Grand prize: one overall winner will be selected from among all the monthly winners and will take home a pair of Swarovski EL 10x42 binoculars.

Every observation counts!

Don't miss the opportunity to take part! Every day is a new chance to head outdoors, observe birds, record your sightings and get closer to winning one of these fantastic prizes.

Grab your binoculars, complete your lists and join the Ornitho-Swarovski Challenge 2026–2027!

During the 2026 Delta Birding Festival weekend, the draw was held to select the winner of the Ornitho-Swarovski Race for the month of September. This was the final monthly draw of this year’s competition, with the winner receiving a €50 voucher for the Oryx shop.

🏆 The September winner was Carlos Álvarez Cros.

The draw for the overall prize of the race was then held, consisting of a pair of Swarovski Optik binoculars. Each monthly winner was assigned the number corresponding to the month in which they won.

The ICO president drew a ball from a bag containing all the numbers of the monthly winners.

🎉 The selected number was 5, corresponding to the month of May and, therefore, to the winner Joan Bertran, who receives the overall prize: a pair of Swarovski Optik binoculars.

📩 We will soon contact all the winners to let you know how you can claim your prizes.

Thank you very much to everyone who took part in this race and, through your observations, contribute to improving our knowledge and monitoring of Catalan birdlife.

And remember: keep entering your observations in the Ornitho portal! 🐦

Here is the list of the monthly winners of the Ornitho-Swarovski Race, from January to August. 🐦

• January: Ernest Garcia
• February: Eugeni Capella
• March: Jordi Cerdeira i Ribot
• April: Susagna Crosas
• May: Joan Bertran
• June: Susanna Cuadros Gõttel
• July: Quico Serra
• August: Xavier Colomé

Each of them receives a €50 voucher for the Oryx shop. Congratulations! 🎉

But that’s not all! 👀 This weekend, at the Delta Birding Festival, we’ll reveal the name of the September winner.

And there’s still one big surprise: from among all the monthly winners, one lucky winner will be drawn to become the overall winner of the race and take home a fantastic pair of Swarovski binoculars! 🏆🔭

Good luck to everyone! 🍀

Aquest any, la Cursa Ornitho-Swarovski manté la mateixa dinàmica de participació i els mateixos premis, però incorpora un canvi en el calendari de comunicació dels guanyadors. Els guanyadors mensuals corresponents als mesos de gener a agost es donaran a conèixer conjuntament a començaments de setembre. Cada un d'ells rebrà un val de 50 € per bescanviar a la botiga Oryx i passarà a formar part del sorteig del premi final. El guanyador del mes de setembre s'anunciarà, com és habitual, durant el Delta Birding Festival (DBF). En el mateix acte es farà també el sorteig del guanyador absolut de la Cursa Ornitho-Swarovski, que serà escollit entre tots els guanyadors mensuals i s'endurà uns prismàtics Swarovski Optik EL 10x42, patrocinats per Swarovski Optik. Aquest canvi afecta únicament el calendari d'anunci dels guanyadors. La participació a la cursa, el sistema de sorteig i els premis es mantenen sense cap modificació, per tant, encara sou a temps d'entar tantes llistes com pugueu per accedir als premi del mes d'agost i de setembre.

Gràcies a Swarovski Optik i Oryx per fer possible una nova edició de la Cursa Ornitho-Swarovski, i molta sort a tots els participants!

Now that the SOCC breeding bird season has come to an end, it's time to collect all the data! We would therefore appreciate if you could submit your records through the ornitho website before 15 July.

But has it ever happened to you that, after submitting a survey, you realized you had forgotten to enter one of the species you observed? Don't worry! In this newsletter, we've included a short tutorial explaining, step by step, how to fix it:

To do so, log in to the ornitho website and go to Administration, then Protocol management, and Check observations. There, you will see a calendar that allows you to select the survey you want to modify:

Once you've selected a survey, all the observations recorded in it will be displayed, and you will be able to edit them. To do this, click on the square with the pencil icon next to any observation belonging to the survey where you want to add a new record.

At this point, to add a new observation, simply click the blue + button., 

A drop-down menu will then appear, allowing you to select the species you want to add, the number of individuals counted, and the observation conditions (in flight, heard, among others).

From here, all you need to do is select the newly added species (for example, an Iberian Green Woodpecker) and complete the remaining information by indicating the sex, the distance band (<25 m, <100 m, >100 m, or flyover), and the section (from 1 to 6). Finally, click the Update button located at the bottom of the page.

We hope you find this short guide helpful! For more detailed information about this process, you can watch the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLnsPk-fo-c

Over the weekend, our servers were unexpectedly overloaded. As a result, our NaturaList app was temporarily unable to connect to the servers. The Biolovision development team has already taken steps to resolve the issue, but it may still take a very long time (in some cases more than 24 hours) for observations from NaturaList to appear on ornitho.cat / ad.

Please do not enter data twice. Give the system some time to recover. No data will be lost. You can also continue to record and submit observations using NaturaList. It may simply take a little while for them to become available on ornitho.cat / ad.

Thank you for your patience,

Due to major maintenance work, the ornitho.cat & ornitho.ad websites will not be accessible on April 20 from 8 pm until the following morning.

A recent study published in the Revista Catalana d’Ornitologia analyses the potential of regular garden bird observations on ornitho.cat to describe and interpret the health status of birds in urban habitats, investigate the causes of mortality, and identify risk factors in order to facilitate mitigation measures.

The study is based on data collected from various sources of information on the health status of garden birds, including direct communications to the authors, admissions of birds to wildlife rehabilitation centres, and observations of birds reported through the mortality module of ornitho.cat. Thanks to citizen participation, this module records the presence and abundance of birds showing some type of health impairment.

Using these data, the authors assess the ability of such programs to detect changes in bird populations by analysing temporal patterns and regional variability. Rapid response, good feedback to observers, and consistent dissemination over time were key to ensuring citizen participation.

These data allowed the detection of outbreaks of Newcastle disease/Orthoavulavirus 1 (NDV), as well as isolated cases of salmonellosis, mycobacteriosis, coligranulomatosis, knemidocoptic mange, fungal pneumonia, and septicemia. Other relevant findings included nephropathy, feather cysts, nutritional hyperparathyroidism, tick infestations, hemosporidian infections, endoparasitosis (trematodes, nematodes, cestodes, and coccidia), and beak deformities, in addition to other causes of mortality such as window collisions, road kills, and predation.

Understanding the causes of mortality is a key tool for conservation, as it helps identify vulnerabilities in specific species and enables targeted actions where appropriate. In this context, there are still few regular information systems on diseases affecting common birds (or garden birds), which are essential for understanding their population dynamics and the impacts these diseases may have on avifauna.

This study is therefore highly relevant and opens the door to improving information management systems based on citizen-collected observations. It highlights the importance of creating and maintaining data collection and management infrastructures that integrate volunteer observations with scientific research. In this context, platforms such as ornitho.cat facilitate this integration and contribute to generating valuable long-term datasets for research and conservation.

How to record observations of dead, injured, or sick animals

Anyone can contribute to these types of projects by submitting their bird observations. Through ornitho.cat, it is possible to easily record sightings and help generate scientific knowledge useful for conservation. Simply tick the “Dead or injured animal”box and complete the mortality module form, either via the website or the NaturaList app.

Data from ornitho.cat are directly linked to the relevant authorities working with these data at the local level, allowing for a rapid response. In addition, the mortality module helps standardize the way mortality data are collected.

You can read the full article here.

El passat dissabte 20 de setembre vam realitzar en directe el sorteig del premi absolut de la cursa Ornitho-Swarovski.

Podeu recuperar el sorteig en aquest enllaç: vídeo del sorteig.

El sorteig es va fer entre els 9 guanyadors mensuals de la cursa, i la persona afortunada va ser Xavier Bayer, guanyador del mes de juliol.

🎉 Moltes felicitats al Xavier, guanyador absolut de la cursa 2025!

Volem aprofitar per donar les gràcies a Oryx i Swarovski Optik per fer possible la cursa un any més, i també als milers de participants d’Ornitho que, amb la vostra constància, feu possible l’existència de la plataforma.

La cursa Ornitho-Swarovski està a punt d'arribar al seu final. Avui coneixem el nom dels penúltims guanyadors mensuals:

Juliol: Antoni Mariné

Agost: Josep Saura

Cada un d'ells s'emporta un val de 50 € per a la botiga Oryx

Aquest cap de setmana 19, 20 i 21 de setembre, coneixerem el nom del darrer guanyador mensual i tot seguit farem el sorteig dels prismàtics Swarovski entre tots els guanyadors mensuals. No us perdeu el sorteig en directe al festival i en streaming al nostre Instagram. 

Al portal Ornitho llistes hi trobareu les bases del concurs.