| EBCC NewsletterSummer 2022 |  | Photo by Pavel Smyček; pasm.cz | Dear all,After what had seemed a very long and sometimes difficult three years since our last conference, many of the EBCC community were able to meet at our 22nd conference in Lucerne in April. I know that very many of the participants will agree that this was a joyous conference – a chance to meet old friends, make new friends, to learn and to strengthen bonds. We owe the Swiss Ornithological Institute, and in particular the team led by Peter Knauss, an immense debt of gratitude for all their hard work in organising such a superb event. Of course, our thoughts were with those who were unable to join us, and in particular those in Ukraine, and under oppressive regimes in Belarus and Russia. The conference has strengthened the EBCC network, and so will the step of establishing an EBCC office, based in Prague with the support of the Czech Society for Ornithology. This has long been an aspiration of the EBCC board, and we are sure it will lead us on to greater successes in the future. Read more about this, as well as many other activities across the network, in the newsletter below. Exciting times! |  | Dr Mark Eaton, Chair, EBCC | | | A successful EBCC conference in LucerneIThe 22nd EBCC conference Bird Numbers 2022, “Beyond the Atlas: challenges and opportunities”, was held in the Swiss Museum of Transport, Lucerne, from 4th to 9th April, organised perfectly by the Swiss Ornithological Institute. The conference brought together people involved in bird research, including statistical and modelling developments, monitoring, and conservation, from across Europe and beyond. In total, 250 researchers and ornithologists from 47 countries attended. The programme included five plenary lectures, almost 80 presentations, 50 poster contributions, four workshops related to EBCC projects and a post-conference workshop for the International Waterbird Census coordinators. Besides the valuable scientific programme and establishing new cooperations, the participants also enjoyed field excursions and a conference dinner. The compilation of abstracts can be downloaded from the conference homepage. Later this year, the December issue of the journal Ornithologischer Beobachter will serve as a symposium volume and will contain contributions based on conference presentations or posters. Read the participants´ reflections of the conference and visit the conference photo gallery |
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| The EBCC has a new officeFrom April 2022, the EBCC has its first professional office based in Prague at the Czech Society for Ornithology (CSO). We are delighted that Petr Voříšek, who has been involved in EBCC projects for many years, will be the manager of the EBCC office. The primary duties of the secretariat will be to provide support in organisational and logistical tasks, including the organisation of conferences and meetings, developing capacity across the EBCC network, engaging in scientific collaborations including responses to funding calls, and fundraising. Another role will be the communications to external audiences, e.g. through our website, e-newsletter and social media, which Alena Klvaňová will manage in her new role as the EBCC Office Communications Manager. This exciting development will undoubtedly help the EBCC achieve even more in developing monitoring and research to underpin conservation acros Europe, but will need continued funding – we will be looking for financial support from across the EBCC’s network to maintain the office. | | | | | | A new video promoting bird censusesSEO BirdLife – Spanish Society of Ornithology has recently produced a short video explaining the objectives of bird monitoring to promote the project and its importance. Feel free to share it across your national networks, too! | |
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| Changes in EBCC delegates | Since April, EBCC has had a new EBCC delegate officer Danae Portolou, the coordinator of the Greek monitoring scheme and EBCC Communications Officer. Danae replaced Henning Heldbjerg, who served as a Delegate officer from April 2019 to spring 2022. We are happy to announce that there is a new delegate from Albania. We sincerely welcome Zydjon Vorpsi from the Organisation for the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania. |
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| | A recent publication compares the breeding and wintering waterbird populations trends | | In May, the East Atlantic Flyway Assessment 2020 was published. This reports on the status of coastal waterbird populations in the East Atlantic Flyway, including a species-level comparison between their trends as assessed during the breeding period (PECBMS) and the winter period (IWC) (chapter 13). The Wadden Sea Flyway Initiative, led by Sovon, started an integrated monitoring programme with Wetlands International and BirdLife International. Within this programme, censuses have been conducted annually in Western Africa from 2013 onwards, and January counts along the entire flyway have taken place with an interval of three years, in 2014, 2017 and 2020. Increasingly, monitoring data from breeding bird programmes have also been used. This programme allows us to document flyway trends for more than 80 waterbird populations of 66 species, based on bird counts at thousands of sites. Moreover, environmental data, including the presence of pressures and the extent of conservation measures taken, have been collated from 115 important coastal sites in Africa and Europe. |
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| A new paper presents an alternative calculation method for multi-species indices | The geometric mean is a widely used and accepted approach for calculating multi-species population indices, and it is used to create all the main wild bird indicators in Europe. However, when rare species occur in the data set, species disappear or appear as new ones in the species set, the geometric mean is less suitable. A team of authors led by Fränzi Korner-Nievergelt from the Swiss Ornithological Institute published the paper exploring the calculation methods of the multi-species index and proposed alternatives to the geometric mean. Read the paper, called Multi-species population indices for sets of species including rare, disappearing or newly occurring species, in Ecological Indicators. |
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| The annual Dutch breeding bird report published | | A new breeding bird report looking back at season 2020 in the Netherlands was published this spring. The report summarises the main results of the national All Breeding Bird project, organised by Sovon Vogelonderzoek Nederland in collaboration with Statistics Netherlands. In the long term, 80 species (40%) showed a strong or moderate decrease, and 95 species (48%) showed a strong or moderate increase. The rest of the species remained stable (22; 11%) or had an uncertain trend (Little Gull). In the short term, 55 species decreased (28%), 84 species increased (42%), and the remainder were stable (37 species, 19%) or had an uncertain trend (22 species; 11%, including the ‘extinct’ species: Tawny Pipit, Great Grey Shrike and Ortolan Bunting). The publication includes an English summary and captions of tables and figures. It is available for download. | |
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| New report: State of birds in Switzerland 2022The annual publication “The State of Birds in Switzerland” (in English, French, German and Italian) summarises the results of our various monitoring projects, conducted with the support of more than 2000 volunteers in all parts of the country. The 2022 report focuses on different long-term monitoring schemes. It also describes trends in scarce breeding birds like the Black-winged Kite and rare winter visitors like Great White Egret, and looks at the state of birds in Switzerland compared to other central European countries. You can also explore interactive graphics from the Swiss Bird Index SBI® and the breeding bird index for each species up until 2021. |
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| | | Bird monitoring in Moldova has startedIn 2021, the Society for the Birds and Nature Protection started a pilot project, the Common Bird Monitoring Scheme program in Moldova. This year the Moldovan ornithologists are financially supported by the EBCC and PECMBS via the “International Census Plots” project, which aims to boost common bird monitoring schemes in Eastern Europe. During the last two months, a team of 10 people carried out field observations in 11 plots scattered all over the little country. The observers monitor selected 2×2 km plots from 15 April until 15 June (in two separate field visits) and note down any bird seen or heard using the point counts method. The observations are uploaded using the Ornitodata application, which the Romanian Ornithological Society has kindly shared with the Moldovan colleagues. |
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| | | | | The 4th Finnish breeding bird atlas startedThe 4th breeding bird atlas project for Finland started in 2022, following earlier atlases conducted in 1974–1979, 1986–1989 and 2006–2010. The fieldwork for the new atlas will be done in the same 10 km × 10 km grids (over 3800 grids) as in the earlier atlases, and the survey years will be 2022–2025. The new atlas also includes timed visit surveys to cover observation efforts, and a new atlas app is available to collect data in the field. The atlas website is available (in Finnish), and the new records are updated on a daily basis. |
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| | | | | AVEFY and AVIZORSEO/BirdLife has developed two free mobile applications for training in the ability to identify bird songs and count large numbers of birds. Both skills are essential for volunteers collaborating in bird monitoring programs and censuses. It is available in English so that more people can use it. Avefy allows learning and practising to identify birds by sounds and offers four difficulty levels. Download Avefy for Android and Ios. Avizor is a game that helps to learn and to practise in counting individuals in large bird groups. You may choose one of the three difficulty levels for training or the competition mode. Download Avizor for Android and Ios. | |
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| | | Understanding the impacts of climate change relies on an evidence base generated by volunteers participating in biodiversity monitoring. However, survey participation often carries its own carbon footprint, especially when participants travel by car. While we need accurate information about how wildlife is faring, we also need to be mindful of any side effects of our scientific activities. In a recent study, Simon Gillings, BTO Principal Data Scientist, and Sarah Harris, BBS National Organiser, estimated the distance travelled to survey squares by volunteers in the UK Breeding Bird Survey. These journeys covered over 280,000km, and around 92% of this distance involved private vehicles, emitting at least 47 tonnes of carbon dioxide, accounting for 0.0001% of total UK emissions in 2019. The authors think that research and conservation institutions need to understand the carbon emitted in the production of their survey data. | |
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| | | The Eurasian African Bird Migration Atlas is publishedThe Eurasian African Bird Migration Atlas is now available as an online publication at migrationatlas.org. It results from the vast effort of ringers, and ringing schemes in Europe organised under Euring, The European Union for Bird Ringing. The atlas presents maps of movement patterns of 300 bird species. Data based on ringing are accompanied by tracking data and offer the most comprehensive information source about the migration of European birds. |
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