Standing up for Nature
Andy Clements has announced that he is stepping down at the end of 2020. He says that it was his intention to step down in October, probably on St Crispin’s day I guess, but coronavirus has pushed that date back a bit. Andy has been and for a few months will continue to be, a…
A Cuckoo called Carlton II has just arrived back in England having spent the last ten months travelling to and from the Congo rainforest, becoming the first of the BTO’s satellite tracked cuckoos to return to this country in 2020. Aided by favourable southerly winds, he completed the last leg of his mammoth journey in…
Data collected by volunteers as part of the Wetland Bird Survey, and published in a report today, play a crucial role in the designation of protected wetland sites in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and underline their importance in helping to conserve our waterbirds. Many of the UK’s wetlands are given protected status as a…
Quite often BTO News is something that I have a quick flick through, tell myself I’ll read it properly later and then sometimes the next thing I do with it is recycle it. But other times I read it closely. This time I seem to have a little more time and motivation to read it…
The latest report, Population estimates of birds in Great Britain and the United Kingdom shows that the Wren continues to hold the title of our commonest bird – the last report in 2013 also had Wren at the top of the list but with a population of just over 8.5 million pairs. Wren numbers are…
A Short-eared Owl, fitted with a satellite tag while breeding in Scotland, has been tracked to Morocco, revealing significant new information for British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) researchers. The Short-eared Owl is something of a nomad, appearing in an area to breed in large numbers one year and then absent the next. Such changes in…
David Noble: I am the Principal Ecologist for Monitoring at the BTO and have been producing and reporting on annual updates of the Wild Bird Indicators for what feels like forever. My twitter name is @AparaNoble The recent publication of the government’s annual update of the Wild Bird Indicators has led to a difference in opinion…
It’s worth having a look at this blog on the Wild Justice website. A review of the impact of various avian predators (currently covered by General Licence 1 in Scotland) was carried out by the BTO for SNH. The review looks pretty good but its summary is quite misleading – it is the equivalent of…
The new BTO President, taking over from Chris Packham CBE, is Frank Gardner OBE the BBC Security Correspondent and birder. When interviewed by Keith Betton for Behind More Binoculars Frank said things like this; Where did it all start for you with birding? I was about ten, my mother got me into it, and we…
Last week I completed my second visit to my second BBS square. It was a pretty standard, slightly quiet visit. But one can only record the birds in front of you and I think I did that pretty diligently. I’ve been surveying this square in east Northants since 2012 and it was surveyed by somebody…