On Friday, 10 February, the third PECBMS webinar took place on Zoom. Since the new data request is nearing, we organised the webinar on RTRIM-shell and related topics. We guided the national coordinators from the data preparation to data validation in the online tool. Later, Anna Gamero introduced the site-level data online tool, which is available to all the coordinators to manage their site-level data. Furthermore, Sergi Herrando ( ICO, CREAF) introduced the new EBBA Live project.
This year, Moldova joins the International Census Plots initiative. Silvia Ursul, the scheme coordinator, summarises the country's pilot season of bird monitoring in ten plots surveyed by nine volunteers.
Today, we publish a new leaflet summarising the 2022 Trends and Indicators update outputs. You will find the list of all 170 species, the classification of their trends, the graph of the three main indicators and a graph comparing the EU Farmland Bird Indicator with and without the UK. The leaflet is freely downloadable from the website.
Since the last update, we have put effort into collecting data with only a one-year delay. We are happy to announce that almost all countries could deliver their data up to 2021, which is an important step forward for the PECBMS to produce the most up-to-date European indices and indicators possible.
The Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) presents a set of updated European common bird indicators covering the period of 1980–2021. The outputs based on the data for 168 common bird species come from 30 countries since we included data from Andorra for the first time. 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.
This report presents updated population trends and indices of 170 common European bird species for the period 1980–2021 produced by the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) in 2022. The species trends presented are for an extended period (from 1980 onwards until 2021) and the last ten years (2012–2021).
Migratory birds are declining globally because of the way that humans have modified the landscape over recent decades – according to new research from the University of East Anglia, the University of Porto and the University of Lisbon (both Portugal) and the Czech Society for Ornithology (Czech Republic). A new study, which was based also on the PECBMS data, reveals that population declines have been greatest among species that migrate to areas with more human infrastructure - roads, buildings, power lines, wind turbines - and higher population densities and hunting levels. Habitat degradation and climate change have also played a part in driving long-term declines.
SEO/BirdLife has developed two free mobile applications to train the ability to identify birds' 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.
This year, the Society for the Birds and Nature Protection carries out the Common Bird Monitoring Scheme program in Moldova. The scheme started in 2021 as a pilot project. Still, in 2022 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.
