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EBBA2

Issue 9

Common Rosefinch (juvenile shown below) - has its range expanded or contracted?

Common Rosefinch (juvenile shown below) - has its range expanded or contracted?

Time for an update - how you can help

The new European Breeding Bird Atlas

How to contribute by field data collected during birdwatch-ing trips abroad. Brief guidelines.

Going for birdwatching abroad? Then you can potentially contribute with your data to the European Breeding Bird Atlas! Here we present guidelines how to do it:

Why

The European Bird Census Council, together with its part-ners across Europe, plans to produce a new atlas for breeding birds in Europe, to update the ground-breaking first atlas (Hagemeijer & Blair 1997), whose data are now 30 years old. The aim of the European Breeding Bird At-las 2 (EBBA2) is to cover the whole of Europe, but get-ting data on bird distribution and abundance is difficult in some countries and regions. Therefore, any reliable infor-mation is extremely valuable, including information from holidays, birdwatching trips or other opportunities to watch and record birds during their breeding seasons 2014-2017.

Where

Many countries in eastern and south-eastern parts of Europe have the biggest difficulties to find enough local fieldworkers and foreign birdwatchers are particularly wel-come there.

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Further information available at http://www.ebcc.info/new-atlas.html

Copyright - EBCC 2004-2014 All rights reserved

What to do

Coordinators of national atlases/EBBA2 national contacts are the best placed to provide details of data required and their for-mat. We encourage anybody interested to contribute to contact national coordinators. Nevertheless, simple data requirements, based on EBBA2 methodology apply to any country. In principle, data collected for the atlas, can come from

1 non-standardised surveys (opportunistic data) or

2 standardised surveys (data collected with standardised ef-fort and methodology).

Both approaches will contribute to the production of European distribution maps (in a grid 50x50 km), the latter will be also used for modelling the distribution in Europe at a scale of 10x10 km. For details see the EBBA2 methodology.

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Black-shouldered Kite (above) was localised in western Iberia 30 years ago, could it have spread?

Ret Kite (right) has done very well in Britain after reintroductions, but what about the rest of Europe

1. Non-standardised survey (opportunistic data).

Minimum requirements on the data are very simple:

• Species must be properly determined.

• Any observation must include:

◦ Date/s of observation (one day or a few consecutive days)

◦ Geographic location (see below for details)

◦ Site name (name of a town, village, mountain etc)

◦ Species recorded

◦ Atlas code (see below for explanation)

◦ Name of observer(s) and contact (e-mail)

◦ Indicate whether you recorded all species detected or just a selection of species (optional)

◦ Time (optional)

◦ Duration of the observation (optional)

◦ Number of individuals observed (optional)

◦ Any further details (optional)

Geographic location and type of information:

There are different possibilities to contribute:

• Provide a species list for a 50x50 km square.

• Provide a species list for a particular location, defined as square (e.g. 10x10 km or 1x1 km), polygon, route or point.

• Provide the precise location of each observation.

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Great white egrets (in flight) and little egrets (wading) have both expanded their ranges since the last atlas.

2. Standardised survey (timed visits)

The aim is to obtain complete lists of species with controlled ef-fort. The data will be used for modelling species distribution at 10x10 km scale across Europe. Details of the standardised sur-veys can differ from country to country, thus, in case you are interested in this type of fieldwork, we recommend to contact national coordinators and ask for detailed instructions. Euro-pean coordinators may also act as contacts and provide square grids when necessary.

However, if you cannot fully contribute to standardised surveys for a particular country (e.g. if two visits are required but you are only staying for a short time) you can still contribute to the standard survey of the European atlas. All you have to do is to report a list of species during a timed visit of 1-2 hours follow-ing a walked route (not staying in the same place). Timed visits should be done during the time of day birds are most active, i.e. usually early morning. Thus, the data requirements are:

• Species must be properly determined (caution making complete species list requires very good knowledge and determi-nation skills)

• A report on an observation of a species must include (infor-mation indicated as optional is preferred as it will significantly increase the value of the records):

◦ Date of observation

◦ Site name (name of a town, village, mountain etc) as pre-cisely as possible

◦ Geographic location: 10x10 or 1x1 square, route or area covered (e.g. in BirdTrack), or geographical coordinates (GPS) of the centre of the surveyed area.

◦ Species recorded

◦ Atlas code (see below for explanation)

◦ Time (beginning and end)

◦ Name of observer(s) and contact (e-mail)

◦ Number of recorded individuals (optional)

◦ Any further details (optional)

Nature-watching in Europe Contents

Great spotted woodpecker (juvenile shown above) is widespread across Europe, but has colonised Ireland only recently. Has it filled in the other few gaps in its range?

Standardised counts will help identify if the population density has changed.

Both approaches can be easily combined. For instance, you can start with a timed visit early in the morning, and can spend the rest of the day visiting different habitats searching for other species.

When

Breeding season, i.e. spring from c. second half of April to end of June. Caution: the breeding season depends on latitude and alti-tude, climatic conditions etc. If you are not sure, please check the timing with the coordinators.

Data from years 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 are desirable. In case you have data slightly older, e.g. from 2012 or 2011, such data may be also useful, especially in countries with lack of data. Please consult it with European coordinators.

Data delivery

The data can be delivered in a simple format (e.g. Excel spread-sheet) containing the required information (see above for data re-quirements for standardised and non-standardised surveys). We prefer that data are delivered to national coordinators, who are best placed to validate them before submitting them to the European co-ordinators. Direct delivery to the European coordinators is also pos-sible. In such cases, we will always check the data with the national coordinators, and we will provide them with the data from their countries.

Keep us informed

In order to improve our work, please fill the simple form. It enables us to keep records about effort and coverage for the European at-las.

Contacts - European coordinators:

Sergi Herrando, ornitologia@ornitologia.org

Petr Voříšek, EuroMonitoring@birdlife.cz

Verena Keller, verena.keller@vogelwarte.ch

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Further information available at http://www.ebcc.info/new-atlas.html

Download the guidelines, 50km square boundaries, and other information.

Copyright - EBCC 2004-2014 - All rights reserved

Common Rosefinch (juvenile shown below) - has its range expanded or contracted?

On-line recording

Some countries use an on-line recording portal, where your observations could be easily entered and thus become available to the national coordinator. Using the national portals is recommended where possible. However, if you have difficulties using the national portal (e.g. for language reasons) we recommend to use the following portals with international coverage:

BirdTrack: this portal has been developed by the British Trust for Ornithology. The global entry tool allows to enter data anywhere in the world. It has been adapted to the purposes of EBBA2.

Ornitho portals: for all of the portals belonging to the ´Ornitho´ family - an application for mobile phones, called NaturaList, has been developed that allows entering data from across Europe. It has special features for collecting atlas data.

Observation.org: This global and multi-taxa on-line portal and its associated application for mobile phones allow entering bird observations across Europe.

If you use BirdTrack, the Ornitho app or Observation.org, data will be passed on to national coordinators and to the central EBBA2 coordination. Make sure that you tick the appropriate boxes when you subscribe to a scheme to allow data transfer.

If you want to use other portals, such as Ebird or if you are unsure what portals to use, please contact the European coordinators for advice.

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Contacts

European coordinators:

Sergi Herrando, ornitologia@ornitologia.org

Petr Voříšek, EuroMonitoring@birdlife.cz

Verena Keller, verena.keller@vogelwarte.ch

Useful tips and suggestions

Any casual record will be valuable. However, we encourage ornithologists to try to record complete lists of observed species at a given site in timed visits as described above.

If a species is very common you dont have to record every single observation but make sure that you note it if you come to a new square.

AVOID making day lists containing information for very different sites, in particular when you have been covering large distances between sites.

For rare or localised species it is useful to record all observations. This can help national coordinators for conservation purposes beyond the atlas.

Any data from any surveyed site will be valuable, but visiting several sites with different habitats may improve the atlas coverage a lot.

Do not only visit birding hotspots. Data from less visited regions and "unattractive" habitats are equally important.

Write all your observations down while you are out in the field.

Document your fieldwork, take pictures, videos and share your experience with others.

Consult the national coordinators for safety instructions and guidance.

Respect national legislation and local cultural specifics.

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Breeding Bird Codes

Non breeding

0 Species observed but suspected to be still on migration or to be summering non-breeder.

A. Possible breeding

1 Species observed in breeding season in possible nesting habitat

2 Singing male(s) present (or breeding calls heard) in breeding season

B. Probable breeding

3 Pair observed in suitable nesting habitat in breeding season

4 Permanent territory presumed through registration of territorial behaviour (song, etc.) on at least two different days a week or more apart at the same place

5 Courtship and display

6 Visiting probable nest site

7 Agitated behaviour or anxiety calls from adults

8 Brood patch on adult examined in the hand

9 Nest building or excavating nest-hole

C. Confirmed breeding

10 Distraction-display or injury-feigning

11 Used nest or eggshells found (occupied or laid within period of survey)

12 Recently fledged young (nidicolous species) or downy young (nidifugous species)

13 Adults entering or leaving nest-site in circumstances indicating occupied nest (including high nests or nest-holes, the contents of which can not be seen) or adult seen incubating

14 Adult carrying faecal sac or food for young

15 Nest containing eggs

16 Nest with young seen or heard

2015-02-25

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