Winter farmland bird survey

I have two BBS squares which I survey in the spring, and so I am doing two lots of English Winter Bird Survey. The images above and below give you some idea of how unexciting the farmland is in this particular square.

The birds were a little bit dull too – not many species and not many birds. But there is always something of interest whenever one goes out and records the birds one sees. I did hear a Grey Partridge though, which is a good record, and I did see a Red Kite over the square for the first time during survey visits. And the hedgerows had quite a few Yellowhammers hanging around in them too. And anyway, my dull square is just as useful, I assume, in the future analysis of these data, as a square full of massive flocks of wintering thrushes, seed-eating birds and Lapwings and Golden Plover.

When I wrote about my visit to my other survey square on 7 January I mentioned in a not wholly complimentary way, the lack of data entry function at this stage of the survey. The online information available at that time suggested that data entry would be possible in ‘early 2019’ which was a bit unspecific. The expectation was that data entry would be available from mid-January but that has now changed to mid-February (see below).

And the BTO sent out, on 9 January, perhaps prompted by my blog (but perhaps not) an email to all involved (at least I assume everyone got one) an email with the same information.

This means that the data entry function will be available a lot closer to the end of the survey period than the beginning – something that I have never experienced before with BTO-led surveys. In a comment on my earlier post Gavin Siriwardena of the BTO apologised for the delay and explained that it was due to the timing of funding from NE and the complexity of the job of fixing the data entry function whilst updating the data entry functionality for the BBS survey as a whole.

All of that makes sense, but it also isn’t ideal. And the BTO, as the interface with the thousands of volunteers who actually collect the data, donating our time, expertise, travel costs and data entry skills for free, is the organisation whose reputation is slightly dented by this. Only slightly dented, as the BTO has a lot of credit in the bank of course, but dented all the same.

Let us just remember that NE and Defra are getting the data, and the BTO are getting the money and the data, but we the volunteers are doing the work. Work worth hundreds of thousands of pounds even at a conservative costing. It’s always better to treat the workers with respect.

I now will have a large pile of data sheets that I will have to set aside a quite large chunk of time to deal with. Quite honestly, it’s a prospect as appealing as doing my tax return.

[registration_form]