The 2024 Wild Bird Indices update shows overall decline in common birds breeding in Europe, while most pronounced is the decline in the farmland species.
European Wild Bird Indices, 2024 update
December 11, 2024
The Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) presents a set of updated European Wild Bird Indices (indicators) covering 1980–2023. The outputs, based on data for 168 wild bird species, come from 30 European countries. We thank all the national coordinators for their efforts to cope with the new programs and the thousands of volunteers counting birds in the field.
The 2024 Wild Bird Indices update shows overall decline in common birds breeding in Europe, while most pronounced is the decline in the farmland species.
We computed the indicators for farmland, forest, and all birds for Europe and its regions (West, North, Central & East, and South Europe), the EU, and New and Old EU states.
Starting this update, we only present all EU indicators calculated without the United Kingdom data.
We used the single European species habitat classifications to assess whether each bird species belongs to farmland, forest, or another indicator.
Download the latest European and EU indicators until 2023. The European indicators were calculated in the usual way, with the United Kingdom data included. However, United Kingdom data was removed from the whole time series for EU indicators calculation (Data provision and co-authorship policies apply).
Data
We used the indices of European wild birds to compute PECBMS 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 Curruca melanothorax from the computation of the indicators because the two species are endemic to Cyprus. Therefore, we included only 168 species in the PECBMS indicators.
The number of species included in the Farmland Bird Index (39 farmland species) and Forest Bird Index (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 (multi-species indices) using MSI-tool (R-script) for calculating 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.
In graphs on the website, we present the smoothed indicators, including their lower and upper confidence limits, and also unsmoothed values of the indicators for the period from 1980 onward. All these values are also available for download on 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. This year, we used only a single European species habitat classification. Detailed information, including the species list with their habitat classification, is provided in the Methods section, chapter 3, Box Species Selection and Classification.
Results
The tables contain the main European, EU, and regional smoothed indicators produced in 2024.
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 Show button above the table to confirm and proceed with your selection. You can also quickly deselect your choice (Reset).
It is possible to check the list of species, their trends, and the list of countries at each presentation of the indicator´s graph.
On the left side of each indicator graph, the numbers of species that are declining (moderately or steeply declining), increasing (moderately or strongly increasing), stable, and uncertain are presented.
Download the latest European and EU indicators.
The main indicators for Europe and the EU are freely available to download in Excel sheets (Data provision and co-authorship policies apply). We would appreciate it if you could acknowledge the data source as EBCC/BirdLife/RSPB/CSO when using the data. Thank you.
We appreciate your help in keeping evidence of the usage of our results. After downloading the data files, please complete the simple registration form.
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 a cautious interpretation of changes in the indicators’ values year by year, and readers should also pay attention to lists of species and countries. We highly recommend contacting the PECBMS coordination unit (klvanova@birdlife.cz) for any use of the results in this report.