The BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey

 

The Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) is the primary scheme for monitoring the population changes of the UK’s common and widespread breeding birds.

Thousands of volunteer birdwatchers carry out standardised bird counts on randomly-located 1-km sites during the breeding season, enabling us to monitor the population changes of over 100 bird species.  Knowing to what extent bird populations are increasing or decreasing is fundamental to bird conservation, and BBS trends are used for bird research and conservation across the UK.      
 

 

Get involved

Taking part is easy – just visit a local square twice during the breeding season, and record all birds you see or hear while walking around your square.

Read more about surveying a BBS square, or contact your Regional Organiser to take on a BBS square in 2011.  

You can enter your bird counts on BBS-Online – log in here, or find out how to get set up.    
 

 

BBS trends 

The latest BBS report reveals that numbers of Kestrels and Sparrowhawks fell in 2009, but Hobby numbers increased.  Breeding waders and long-distance migrants continued to decline.  Over 3,200 BBS squares were covered in 2009, allowing us to monitor the population trends for 106 of our breeding bird species, and we are very grateful to all volunteers who took part in the survey.

Submissions from 2010 are being collated and checked, and the 2010 report will be published in 2011.

More detailed infomation can be found on the BBS results web pages, and results from all BTO schemes combined can be found on the BirdTrends pages.

The BBS organiser is Kate Risely (phone: 01842 750050, email: bbs [at] bto [dot] org).