 | EBCC NewsletterWinter 2022 |  | Photo by Jiří Parůžek Dear readerWinter has arrived in full force here in northern England and will have reached many of you wherever you are reading this in Europe. Much of the EBCC’s work concerns the monitoring of breeding birds, so you can read this newsletter and follow the links from it and remember warmer spring and summer days. In particular, do read the latest results from one of our flagship projects, the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme, which are now remarkably being produced the year after field data was collected. So many of the EBCC community are involved in collecting data for this, so can enjoy seeing these valuable outputs based on their contributions. There’s also plenty of reading in the new proceedings from the EBCC conference in Lucerne in the spring, another speedily produced output! And if that’s not enough, the new Wildlife Comeback report has detailed accounts on the recovery of birds and mammals across Europe. So, stay warm, and spend some time catching up on the latest news, papers and results from the EBCC community. Enjoy!
Best wishes Mark |  | | | 2022 PECBMS trends and indicators update On 23rd November, we published the 2022 update of the Common European Bird Trends and Indicators! 2022 Highlights are: • The delay between in-field monitoring and the production of indicators is now a year shorter. • Data from 42 years, covering the period of 1980–2021. • 170 common bird species breeding in Europe are included. • 30 countries (including Andorra for the first time). • EU indicators were produced without the UK data (due to Brexit) for the first time but are still consistent. • Improved R-based tools were used for imputation. Our thanks go to the 15,000+ volunteer counters, national coordinators, policy experts and researchers who support our work! |
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| | | EBBA2 discountWe are happy to inform you that EBBA2 is now available for a special price of 70€ (plus shipping). Book your copy by 12 Dec to get it before Christmas, and use the discount code EBBA2EBCC. |
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|  | European wildlife comeback: a new report that shows how species can return when we give them space to recover A new and updated Wildlife Comeback Report was published on 27 September 2022. Commissioned by Rewilding Europe, it highlights the species that have made a comeback in Europe over recent decades, explores the reasons behind their recovery, and provides an outlook for the future recovery of European wildlife. The Zoological Society of London, BirdLife International and the European Bird Census Council compiled the information and produced the handsomely illustrated report.
The report includes a selection of 25 bird species and shows that the European population of some of them have grown - both in size and geographical range - over recent decades. The EBBA2 project made a prominent contribution to the project since it provided maps of current distribution and change of distribution between the 1980s and 2010s for all bird species. For some species and overall indicators, PECBMS data was also very valuable. | | | | The EBCC Office – a milestoneA new EBCC Office in Prague was established in the spring, led by Petr Voříšek and supported by Alena Klvaňová. The long-standing collaboration between the EBCC and the Czech Society for Ornithology has thus been strengthened. The CSO conference in Mikulov provided the opportunity for Verena Keller, EBCC vice-chair, and Aleksi Lehikoinien, the EBCC board member, to meet Tomáš Pospíšil, CSO vice-chair, and Zdeněk Vermouzek, CSO director, and sign the agreements establishing the relationship. A professional office is a milestone for EBCC, providing the necessary staff resources to support the board in fulfilling its tasks. |
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|  | EBBA Live Farmland: whole involvement and first maps The EBBA Live Farmland is a new EBCC project that started in September 2022. It aims to produce updated species distributions and maps showing change since EBBA2. For this purpose, the project attempts to make the best possible use of site-level data from the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) and data from the EuroBirdPortal (EBP). In recent months, the project has received the enthusiastic participation of the EBCC community. The project’s first phase is being developed as part of the EUROPABON project. It aims to update the EBBA2 maps of farmland birds using PECBMS data collected since the end of the fieldwork period for the European atlas. National coordinators have received the project very positively, and we produced the first preliminary maps. | | Ukrainian Breeding Bird Atlas | | Ukrainian Breeding Bird Atlas, published in memory of Ihor Horban (1960–2017), EBBA1 and EBBA2 national coordinator, was officially launched in November 2022, after a long period of data collection (2015–2017) and book preparation (2018–2021). The atlas contains distribution and abundance data on 275 bird species reported to breed in Ukraine for 2013–2020. Each bird species is treated with a map showing the distribution within squares of 50x50 kilometres (2500 km2) with breeding category and abundance. Data on the distribution of birds in Europe and their breeding habitats are given. Species accounts are illustrated with the author's drawings. The research was undertaken within the framework of the European Bird Census Council project "The Second European Breeding Bird Atlas" with the financial support of the MAVA Foundation, Swiss Ornithological Institute and private donations of the members of the Czech Society for Ornithology. |
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| | EBCC conference Lucerne April 2022: Proceedings now available | | In April 2022, the EBCC conference was held in Switzerland for the first time. One year after the publication of the "European Breeding Bird Atlas 2" and with the online version of the maps published in early 2022, the focus was on topics that tie in with EBBA2, such as its use for conservation, research, national atlases and monitoring projects. The contributions submitted to the conference proceedings reflect this spectrum, ranging from studies on individual species such as the Collared Pratincole in Albania, the Long-legged Buzzard in Cyprus and the Citril Finch, to the importance of protected areas for wintering waterbirds in the international Rhine Valley and Algeria, as well as estimates of the population size of wintering waterbirds. The importance of the Egyptian islands in the Red Sea for breeding seabirds, the monitoring of forest seabirds in Catalonia and the changes in the distribution ranges of breeding bird species in the European part of Russia over the last 20–30 years are also addressed. The conference proceedings are published by Ala, Swiss Society for the Study and Conservation of Birds, in the December 2022 issue of its journal Ornithologischer Beobachter. Pdfs of the ten articles from the conference can be downloaded here. The EBCC Board thanks the authors and reviewers of the manuscripts, particularly the journal editors Peter Knaus and Valentin Amrhein, for their efforts to publish the proceedings less than a year after the conference. |
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| | International Census Plots surveys in Serbia and Moldova In 2022, two countries participated in developing International Census Plots (ICP). This initiative aims to start standardised generic breeding bird monitoring schemes in countries with lower availability of fieldworkers and to contribute to European trend estimates via PECBMS. We expect that the data from ICP will allow the production of species trends and indices at the regional supra-national level first. Later, when capacities at the national level increase, the production of national indices is also anticipated. In 2022, Serbia ran their second year of ICP, with 32 plots surveyed, while Moldova joined for the first time with ten plots covered. | | | Pilot Common Bird Monitoring survey in Moldova During April–June 2022, the Society for Birds and Nature Protection from Moldova carried out the Common Bird Monitoring survey, which consisted of field research in 10 plots of 2x2 km each. A team of nine people surveyed the plots during two separate field visits from April to June. During both visits in all ten plots, our small team counted 2,718 bird individuals and 96 bird species. We were lucky to have the support of our colleagues from the Romanian Ornithological Society, who provided us with their monitoring app called „Ornitodata”. Thanks to this app, we had an easier time collecting data in the field. We also benefited from the financial support of the EBCC, which helped us invest in our team of volunteers and strengthen the CBM scheme for the following years. |
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