The international counts have always been aligned with the IWC to achieve the highest possible coverage. Still, results from previous counts show, that not all swans are associated with waterbodies covered by the network of IWC sites but also concentrate e.g. in farmland areas to feed. This eventually may involve extra coordinative effort to get all relevant sites covered. Opportunistic records, collected by many volunteers submitted to online platforms like Ornitho, dofbasen, Observation, eBird and others haven proven to be a good extra source of information, so they may further assist in achieving a better coverage. In some countries, national coordinators issue dedicated calls on these platforms shortly ahead of the census to boost awareness and encourage observers to report their sightings (besides the IWC count). Specifically for NW-European Bewick’s Swans, an online platform from BirdLife Germany (Nabu) may also assist in checking coverage of the counts, as they show positions of a large pool of swans with GPS tags (see https://zwergschwan.de/karte-senderschwaene).