The Birdtrack reporting rate graphs for Britain and Ireland for two species show a pretty convincing impact of lockdown on avian reporting rates – as suggested in an earlier blog post here.
Here is the graph for House Sparrow for this year and the historical data:
So this shows that for the early part of 2020 House Sparrow was appearing at a lower than normal frequency in complete lists of birds sent in to Birdtrack – I wonder why. But it also shows that during lockdown the reporting rate went shooting up. That’s what we’d expect if more people were staying at home and compiling bird lists for their gardens which might well be expected to be more likely to have House Sparrows than the average birding locality. the graph also seems to show the easing off of this impact as lockdown has eased (in some parts of the UK).
And we see the opposite sort of picture for the Little Egret;
Little Egrets were a bit more frequently reported in complete lists in thee early part of 2020 but once lockdown came in the reporting rate dropped because few people have many Little Egrets flying over their gardens (I do sometimes as of this year) and that as lockdown has begun to ease it appears that reporting rates have returned to normal.
This is, what we would expect – so it is good to see that it’s clear in the data. Have a look around Birdtrack yourself for other examples, and also consider contributing your own observations regularly.
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