Blog post by Mark Eaton, Principal Conservation Scientist, RSPB Centre for Conservation Science.
The Breeding Bird Survey 2017 report, published today, is produced from the efforts of thousands of people.
This includes the partnership of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and the RSPB, that funds and steers the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS); the BTO scientists who run the survey, analyse the data and produce the report on behalf of the partnership; the volunteers in the BTO’s network of regional coordinators who recruit, train and manage volunteer surveys; and then those surveyors themselves.
In 2017 a total of 2,814 dedicated and skilled observers gave their time freely to survey 3,941 1-km squares scattered randomly across the UK’s landscape.
Using the data for conservation
Thanks to the efforts of these volunteers, the BBS is one of the best wildlife monitoring schemes in the world, delivering scientifically robust trends in the populations of the UK’s common and widespread breeding birds every year.
These trends are a cornerstone of the conservation efforts of the RSPB and other organisations working on the conservation of the UK’s wild birds.
BBS trends, showing how our bird populations have fared since 1994 (and, when combined with data from the predecessor survey the Common Birds Census, since the late 1960s), are used to identify the species most needing conservation help: they are a crucial component of the Birds of Conservation Concern assessments which identify the red list, of species of greatest conservation concern.
BBS data then helps inform research into the declines of red-listed species, pin-pointing the causes of declines and identifying conservation remedies. Finally, if such conservation solutions can be designed and applied, we hope future BBS trends will allow us to track the recovery of species in response to our conservation efforts.
What does this year’s report show?
It gives population trends for 117 species in the UK, plus, where data is sufficient, for the UK’s four constituent countries, and for English regions.
Many of the changes detected since the beginning of the BBS in 1994 are by now familiar stories: the continued decline of farmland birds such as corn buntings and grey partridges, the struggles of a wide suite of songbirds which migrate to spend the winter south of the Sahara, including whinchats, nightingales and turtle doves, and the rise of introduced species such as mandarin ducks and ring-necked parakeets.
New trends for 2017
The latest report reiterates these patterns, but a new development gives further insight. As well as reporting the trend in bird populations since the start of the scheme, and the change over the most recent year, for the first time the report reveals how numbers of each species covered have changed over the last five (2011-16) and ten (2006-16) years.
This allows us to detect very recent changes, with some perhaps surprising results. Some recent trends offer cause for hope, with species previously showing substantial long-term declines having stabilised or even increased in recent years.
Faring better
The red-listed yellow wagtail, for example, has increased by 7% over the last ten years, and the ten-year trend for ring ouzel shows a 37% increase – welcome news, on the first occasion this species has featured in the report.
Not doing so well
In other instances the recent trends are not so encouraging, showing continuing declines. Turtle dove numbers have fallen by a shocking 84% in just the last ten years, and 59% in the last five, emphasising the importance of the work being done by the RSPB and partners in Operation Turtle Dove.
And in some cases the short-term trends highlight new concerns; the recent decline in greenfinches, caused by the spread of the contagious parasite Trichomoniasis, is starkly shown by a drop of 64% since 2006 and 44% since 2011.
How to get involved
Weather permitting, on the day the report is published I will be up early to make the first of two annual surveys to ‘my’ BBS square, high up in Northumberland’s Cheviot Hills.
To be honest, it doesn’t usually have that many birds in it, but the views are fine, and hopefully it will still have its curlews (although across the UK numbers are down by 48% since 1994).
I will enjoy a fine walk, record a few birds, and gain satisfaction from the knowledge that I will be contributing to conservation of our precious wild birds at the same time. If this sounds your idea of a good morning out, find out how you can become a BBS volunteer on the BTO website.
Read the full report.