From 2005, the The Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU, Germany) has called people in Germany to count birds in their gardens during a defined time (Friday to Sunday) in May. Similar to the Big Garden Birdwatch in Great Britain, which has been performed since 1979, the German “Stunde der Gartenvögel” (hour of the garden birds) aims at obtaining a yearly overview of the birds in villages and towns. While this birdwatching action enables giving a broad overview due to the large number of gardens and parks involved (around 40,000 in the year 2024), several drawbacks have to be mentioned that may impede the comparability of the counted bird numbers from one year to another. The number of people counting changes, and the weather influences the results. General problems in all years are the erroneous identifications of birds, birds not mentioned since they could not be identified, or the typical focus on the daytime, so that nocturnal bird species are mostly ignored. Here, we give an overview of the chronological development of the overall numbers of species and specifically of the most frequent garden birds. We discuss correlations with external factors, such as weather and numbers of participants, and compare the results with ornithological studies in the same period as well as with the results of the yearly Birdrace in Germany, where ornithologically interested people count birds in a defined area on the full first Saturday in May.