 | |  | Photo by Jan Pavlíček
Dear reader
The breeding season of birds is in full swing, and many of you will be busy with surveys. Depending on the habitat, you will have identified a large part of the species by their song or calls rather than from sight. Did it cross your mind that your work could be replaced by automatic recording and analysis? Automatic sound identification is developing rapidly, and its use for bird monitoring is a topic widely discussed in the EBCC community. Following this year’s AGM discussion, the board has decided to install an acoustic monitoring working group. As an example of the current challenges faced by coordinators of bird monitoring, read the statement provided by BTO on the use of audio-ID tools.
Please also take a look at the other news items and start thinking about the next EBCC Conference in less than a year.
With my best wishes for the summer Verena Keller, Chair, EBCC |
|  |  | | We are pleased to inform you about the new website dedicated to the 23rd EBCC Conference, Bird Numbers 2025: Synergies in Monitoring for Conservation. The conference will be held from March 31 to April 4, 2025, in Riga, Latvia, and organised by the University of Latvia in collaboration with the Latvian Ornithological Society. EBCC conferences are held every three years, bringing together people involved in bird monitoring, research, and conservation across Europe and beyond. We welcome contributions on any topic related to the EBCC work. The submission deadline for talk abstracts is September 30, 2024, and for posters, January 15, 2025. Check more on important dates. |
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| |  | | In 2023, EBCC established the Small Grant Fund to support national bird monitoring activities by EBCC partner organisations, particularly in Europe's low- and middle-income countries. Two projects, which started in early 2024, were supported in 2023. On 15 May, EBCC opened a 2024 call for applications. The number of projects to be funded will depend on the success of dedicated fundraising this year. We encourage new projects to be submitted; however, updates on the projects that did not get support in 2023 are also eligible. We encourage our national partners to submit their applications by 15 July 2024. Download more info about the scheme, including guidelines for applicants. |
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| |  | EBBA Live Farmland
The publication of EBBA2 represented a milestone for European ornithology. However, updating data on species’ distributions more frequently and ensuring they are harmonised across Europe could complement the role of atlases. EBCC has started EBBA Live, which attempts to fill in this information gap for as many species as possible. This ambitious project has begun with a pilot project on farmland birds, EBBALive Farmland. The results of the first phase are now available on the EBBA2 webpage. You will find maps showing the occurrence of 50 farmland bird species based on data from general bird monitoring projects, most of which are integrated into the PECBMS and new 10-km modelled distribution maps for the post-EBBA2 period 2018–2022. The work for this phase was carried out in the context of the EuropaBON project. The project's first phase has been possible thanks to the contribution of 50 ornithological organisations from 35 European countries. The second phase will integrate EuroBirdPortal data in the context of the LIFE EBP Reinforcement project. |
| |  | Annual Turtle Dove flyway-specific indices |
| The European Turtle Dove Streptopelia turtur breeding numbers show an overall decline, and the species was classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. The main threats are illegal hunting and trapping, unsustainable hunting levels, habitat loss and intensive agriculture. Therefore, the European Commission induced an International single species action plan for Turtle Dove protection. The PECBMS´ task within this plan is to impute Turtle Dove flyway-specific indices. The data is also used to create models predicting the population's future development under various conditions. Thanks to the enormous effort of the national coordinators to deliver data till 2023, we have been able to produce the most up-to-date outputs this spring and showed that the trend in the western flyway with working hunting moratoria and restrictions has been improving for the last three years. However, the situation is different in the central-eastern flyway. PECBMS appreciates that the data are used by scientists for research and by the European Commission in active species protection. |
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| |  | New publication on population estimates
On 13 May 2024, researchers from the EBCC and BirdLife International published a new paper about European bird population estimates. The article can be openly accessed in the journal Bird Conservation International. Population sizes collated in the European Red List of Birds (ERLoB), and the abundances compiled in the European Breeding Bird Atlas 2 are compared at country and continental levels to find ways to improve the process of estimating bird populations in Europe. The authors greatly thank the broad community of European ornithologists and birdwatchers that made EBBA2 and ERLoB possible. |
| | | Ecological traits predict population trends of urban birds in Europe
In the study, published in March in Ecological Indicators, the authors used data from the PECBMS to test which ecological traits influence the national trends of 95 bird species that frequently breed in urban areas of 18 European countries. The outputs include the finding that birds that colonised cities earlier have more negative population trends than birds that colonised cities more recently. Moreover, open-landscape urbanised species appeared to have more positive population trends than urbanised forest-dwelling species. Besides, urbanised ground-breeding birds had more positive population trends than urbanised birds that do not nest on the ground. |
| | Slow-lived birds and bats carry higher pathogen loads |
| In a new publication using EBBA2 data, researchers from Finland mapped disease risks of birds and bats across Europe and developed a forecasting model to predict outbreaks. They found that species trait, distribution, and climate predict large-scale pathogen prevalence; bird and bat species with a slower pace of life are more likely to carry pathogens; sedentary and forest species have a higher pathogen prevalence, and temperature is the most important predictor for pathogen prevalence. |
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| | Swiss State of Birds 2024 report online
The 2024 version of the publication The State of Birds in Switzerland summarises the results of our various monitoring projects, conducted with the support of more than 2000 volunteers in all parts of the country. Among other themes, the new report highlights ways to promote farmland biodiversity and emphasises the Alps' role as an ark of the Anthropocene. |
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| BTO statement on the use of Auto-ID apps
In May, BTO published a statement asking volunteers involved in their monitoring surveys not to rely on the outputs of mobile apps like Merlin BirdID when conducting their surveys. Whilst there is an undoubted opportunity for widening participation, appealing to a younger demographic, being more inclusive and helping expand geographic coverage in surveys, at the present moment, these tools are considered too unreliable. For users of Merlin, for example, many report calls of Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus when, in fact, a Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita was present. Furthermore, using these apps would represent a fundamental change in the field recording protocol, whose impact on data and population trends still needs to be understood. Therefore, and for the time being, BTO has taken the precaution of asking volunteers in our surveys, especially BBS/WBBS and BirdTrack, not to rely on their outputs but only to use them as a confirmatory tool. Of course, we recognise the great benefit of using these tools as a learning aid and encourage volunteers who wish to do so. |
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| | Citizen science project on the impacts of exotic species releases its first results
In 2021, researchers at the Laboratory of Ornithology from the University of Évora in Portugal developed a citizen science initiative, IBISurvey (Introduced Bird Interaction Survey), to evaluate the effects of exotic birds on the environment, society, and economy of European countries.
In April, the IBIS survey team released its first findings as an online report summarising data through December 31, 2023. Seven hundred fifty participants submitted 1,481 observations of 75 exotic bird species across 30 European countries during that period. Most observations, including the Ring-necked Parakeet and Egyptian Goose, occurred in urban areas (51%) and wetlands (27%). This data allowed the researchers to identify 1,166 environmental interactions involving exotic birds. Of these, 37% involved non-aggressive socialisations with native species and 28% involved feeding on non-crop plants. Although only 8% of the interactions were aggressive behaviour, their potential impact on native species was significant, with the Mallard being the most common victim. Researchers emphasised the need for detailed documentation of these interactions with photos to better understand their impact on ecosystems and plant yields, particularly in farmlands. The ongoing contribution of observations to the IBIS survey project remains crucial for understanding and mitigating the effects of exotic bird species in different environments. |
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