My Breeding Bird Survey walk starts near the church in the distance. I carried out the second visit to my second BBS square yesterday – it was a bit windy in the more exposed places but there were still plenty of birds around. Do you remember that on the first visit I was saying that…
Tag: BBS
BBS visit 2
I did the second visit to my first BBS square yesterday – as I drove the few miles there and back there was news of the terror attack on London Bridge and at Borough Market. Crazy! I’m glad I live in a rural area but I’ve enjoyed snacking, dining, having my hair cut, having a…
BBS visit 1
Having spent most of April in Spain, I was looking forward to doing my first BBS visit to one of my two BBS squares – I really was. So much so that having arrived back home at about 0400 on Saturday morning I even considered going straight out to see if I could see any…
BBS
The latest Breeding Bird Survey report – for 2015 – is out. I collected data that went into this report, and I am proud that I did. I immediately turn to Table 4 – the summary of trends for the UK (and then look briefly at Table 5 – for England) – but this time…
Another BBS first visit
I surveyed my second BBS square on Tuesday morning. It was sunny and there were lots of birds. This site starts and ends in a village which is packed full of birds; heads out along the River Nene where there are quite a lot of birds; and then before returning to the village traverses some…
First BBS visit
I was up early, although not that early for me, yesterday to visit one of my two Breeding Bird Survey squares. This is the 12th year I have covered this particular 1km square on the border of Cambs and Northants – it almost feels like mine after all this time. The weather was cold, and…
BBS second visits
I completed the second visits to my two BBS squares the weekend before last. Each passed without huge incident. On my first square it was a rather low species total over the two visits, but last year was the highest ever so not much of a trend there. I was glad that there were still…
More thoughts on a future BBS
I’m heading up to Scotland tomorrow to give a talk in Edinburgh, and I’ll be scurrying home on Wednesday before the independence vote on Thursday. I’m an Englishman born of an English father and Welsh mother but I had my first job in nature conservation in Scotland (before university), met my wife in Scotland, changed…
2013 BBS report – better together?
The most recent BBS report from the BTO, JNCC and RSPB isn’t very interesting. By which, I mean not a jot of criticism. It’s just that it seems to be telling me very much the same as last year’s report. That’s what monitoring is like sometimes – nothing much changes. But that doesn’t mean that…
BBS second visit
I’m really quite fond of my Breeding Bird Survey square (I have two but there is one that I think of as ‘mine’ more than the other). It really doesn’t photograph that well – being a bog-standard bit of arable farmland – but still, I am fond of it. On Sunday morning I made my…