Breeding Bird Survey 2008 - regional highlights

I thought that following extract from a BTO press release about the BBS from 16 July might be of interest to you:

"Yorkshire and the Humber is the only region in which Skylark (4%) has increased in numbers. Blackbird (57%), Carrion Crow (96%), Long-tailed Tit (64%), Moorhen (56%) and Reed Bunting (57%) have increased more than in other regions. Kestrel (-23%) and Magpie (-19%) have declined the most in this region, and it is the only one in which Whitethroat (-3%) has declined.

[Bird names in red and in amber denote the species is on the red or amber list respectively of Birds of Conservation Concern 3: 2009 ]

All the figures refer to the smoothed long-term trends covering the BBS period."

I received my copy of the report for 2008 in the post yesterday, it should be with you or on its way if you took part in the BBS last year.

Breeding Bird Survey

The Breeding Bird Survey season has now finished for 2009. Currently I have data from 16 squares submitted through the BBS-Online system. One or two of these are for one visit only.

The last two years have seen the York Region hit 30 squares covered, so we are half way there. Potentially we could achieve 35 squares, although in practice there are usually a handful that don't get covered for one reason or another.

The system is down for maintenance at the time of writing but will be back tomorrow. Please submit your data as soon as you can.