The 2021 Indicators Update shows the continuing decline in the farmland species, while the common forest species are doing well.
European common bird indicators, 2021 update
December 5, 2021
The Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) presents a set of updated European wild bird indicators covering 1980–2019. The outputs based on the data for 168 common bird species come from 29 countries since we included data from Croatia for the first time. In addition, we conducted an extensive data quality check and tested new R software versions. We wish to thank all the national coordinators for their efforts to cope with the new programmes, and to the thousands of volunteers counting birds in the field.
The 2021 Indicators Update shows the continuing decline in the farmland species, while the common forest species are doing well.
We computed the indicators for Europe and its regions (West, North, Central & East and South Europe), EU, New and Old EU states for common farmland, forest, and all common birds. We used the Single European and BioGeo regional species habitat classifications to assess whether each bird species belongs to farmland, forest, or another indicator.
Download the latest European and EU indicators until 2019. (Data provision and co-authorship policies apply).
Data
We used the indices of common European birds to compute European indicators. We used the regional and EU individual species indices to calculate regional indicators for West, North, Central & East, South Europe or EU, and New and Old EU states. Although we produce indices for 170 species, we remove Cyprus wheatear Oenanthe cypriaca and Cyprus warbler Sylvia melanothorax from the computation of the indicators because the two species are endemic in Cyprus. Therefore, we included only 168 species in the common bird indicators.
The number of species included in the common farmland bird indicators (39 farmland species) and common forest bird indicators (34 forest species) for Europe and the EU remained the same as last year.
Methods
We describe the computation procedure of the individual species indices in the Methods section, chapter 1. National species indices and trends (computation of national species indices) and chapter 2. Supranational species indices and trends (calculation of supranational – European and regional – species indices).
We compute the indicators (multispecies indices) using MSI-tool (R-script) for calculating of Multi-Species Indicators (MSI) and trends in MSIs following Soldaat et al. (2017). European, EU, or regional species indices, including standard errors, are used as source data. We present the smoothed indicators in graphs at the website, and smoothed indicators including their lower and upper confidence limits for the periods from 1980-onwards and 1990-onwards may be shown, too (if you select the option) and are available for download at the website (see below). We describe the production of the indicators in detail in the Methods section, chapter 3. Multispecies indicators.
Species habitat classification
Species habitat classification for main habitat types (farmland, forest, and others) has been developed using improved procedures accepted at the PEBCMS workshop in Prague in 2005. We used two versions of species habitat classification – single European and BioGeo regional species habitat classification. Detailed information, including the list of species with their habitat classification, is provided in the Methods section, chapter 3, Box Species selection and classification.
Results
In the tables, you can find the main European, EU, and regional smoothed indicators produced in 2021.
For the complete information on an indicator (graph, list of species, and list of countries), tick the checkbox at the left side of the indicator name in the column Indicator and click on the button Show above the table.
For drawing and comparing graphs for several indicators at once, tick the checkboxes at the left side of indicator names and choose All data in one graph – the option “yes”. Then, click the button Show above the table to confirm and proceed with your selection. You can also quickly deselect your choice (Reset).
At each presentation of the indicator´s graph, you can check the list of species and their trends and the list of countries.
On the left side of each indicator graph, the numbers of species in each indicator that are declining (moderately or steeply declining), increasing (moderately or strongly increasing), stable and uncertain are presented.
Download the latest indicators
The main indicators for Europe and the EU are now freely available for download in Excel sheets (Data provision and co-authorship policies apply). When using the data, we would be grateful if you acknowledged the data source as EBCC/BirdLife/RSPB/CSO. Thank you.
We appreciate your help to keep evidence of the usage of our results. For this purpose, please fill in the simple registration form after you download the data files.
Download the latest European and EU indicators until 2019.
Note that the data is licensed under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 4.0 and is governed by applicable copyright law (Creative Commons Legal Code). Creative Commons. January 9, 2008. Retrieved February 22, 2010.
Note: We recommend cautious interpretation of changes in the indicators values year by year, and readers should also pay attention to lists of species and countries. For any use of the results presented in this report, we strongly recommend consulting the PECBMS coordination unit (klvanova@birdlife.cz).