Report on the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme, June 2021

Project funding

The project is secured by the EC tender called “Technical and scientific support in relation to the delivery and development of wild bird indicators for the EU“.

Collection of national species indices
On 14 April, we spread the data request among the national coordinators asking for the data until 2019 (and until 2020 if available). We have been dealing with various problems with RTRIM-shell, RSWAN and ONLT and assisted national coordinators. Alongside that, we are developing a new database.

Dataset revision and Technical improvements

The data revision on a national basis was completed on 31 March 2021. We checked and updated bird names according to the HBW/BirdLife nomenclature. In addition, we requested new EURING codes for the species missing a code.

Data revision consists of a couple of essential phases, which overlap each other. Therefore, we have been working on RSWAN modification for PECBMS data, RTRIM-shell modification for national coordinators, data control of PECBMS species, online tool update, new site-level data online tool, database transformation from Access to R and helping coordinators to deal with all the changes.

We have updated the RTRIM-shell tutorial. On 30 March, we ran the RTRIM-shell webinar for all the coordinators, where we explained and discussed the whole process from RTRIM-shell input preparation to RTRIM-shell output validation in the Online tool. We also introduced a new PECBMS Forum on Slack to coordinators as a tool for fast communication and advice.

Presentation of results and promotion

PECBMS contributed to the spring issue of the EBCC Newsletter spread to more than 400 recipients. See an archive of the newsletter.

PECBMS website www.pecbms.info has been actualised regularly. Since 5 December 2020, we have published four news, updated the publications, PECBMS methods, and the information on the bird monitoring schemes in Europe.

We regularly published PECBMS news items on the FB account of EBCC, which serves as a promotional platform for all EBCC projects (40 news since 12 December).

Research

In March PECBMS data paper was published in Scientific Data. In addition, the database containing supra-national and national population indices is publicly available at the Zenodo repository.

We have been involved in the preparation and commenting of seven manuscripts using PECBMS data

We participate in the following projects:

• NERC (aiming to advance the understanding of stability within and among ecosystems and across ecological scales), led by RSPB and the University of Sheffield
• Turtle dove migration – a proposal for the delineation of flyways (Office Français de la Biodiversité and Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos). In this respect, we actively participated in the workshop on Adaptive Harvest Management of the Turtle Dove in the western and central-eastern flyways. Furthermore, we have done a pilot study on the best calculation method to calculate the indices and trends for two Turtle dove flyways based on the PECBMS data.

 PECBMS data were used in the three following publications:

• Vojtěch Brlík, Eva Šilarová, Jana Škorpilová, Hany Alonso, Marc Anton, Ainars Aunins, Zoltán Benkö, Gilles Biver, Malte Busch, Tomasz Chodkiewicz, Przemysław Chylarecki, Dick Coombes, Elisabetta de Carli, Juan C. del Moral, Antoine Derouaux, Virginia Escandell, Daniel P. Eskildsen, Benoît Fontaine, Ruud P. B. Foppen, Anna Gamero, Richard D. Gregory, Sarah Harris, Sergi Herrando, Iordan Hristov, Magne Husby, Christina Ieronymidou, Frédéric Jiguet, John A. Kålås, Johannes Kamp, Primož Kmecl, Petras Kurlavičius, Aleksi Lehikoinen, Lesley Lewis, Åke Lindström, Aris Manolopoulos, David Martí, Dario Massimino, Charlotte Moshøj, Renno Nellis, David Noble, Alain Paquet, Jean-Yves Paquet, Danae Portolou, Iván Ramírez, Cindy Redel, Jiří Reif, Jozef Ridzoň, Hans Schmid, Benjamin Seaman, Laura Silva, Leo Soldaat, Svetoslav Spasov, Anna Staneva, Tibor Szép, Guido Tellini Florenzano, Norbert Teufelbauer, Sven Trautmann, Tom van der Meij, Arco van Strien, Chris van Turnhout, Glenn Vermeersch, Zdeněk Vermouzek, Thomas Vikstrøm, Petr Voříšek, Anne Weiserbs & Alena Klvaňová (2021): Long-term and large-scale multispecies dataset tracking population changes of common European breeding birds. Sci Data 8, 21. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00804-2

• Maggini I, Cardinale M, Favaretto A, et al. (2021): Comparing population trend estimates of migratory birds from breeding censuses and capture data at a spring migration bottleneck. Ecol Evol. 11:967–977. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.7110
• Morrison Catriona A., Butler Simon J., Robinson Robert A., Clark Jacquie A., Arizaga Juan, Aunins Ainars, Baltà Oriol, Cepák Jaroslav, Chodkiewicz Tomasz, Escandell Virginia, Foppen Ruud P. B., Gregory Richard D., Husby Magne, Jiguet Frédéric, Kålås John Atle, Lehikoinen Aleksi, Lindström Åke, Moshøj Charlotte M., Nagy Károly, Nebot Arantza Leal, Piha Markus, Reif Jiří, Sattler Thomas, Škorpilová Jana, Szép Tibor, Teufelbauer Norbert, Thorup Kasper, van Turnhout Chris, Wenninger Thomas and Gill Jennifer A. (2021) Covariation in population trends and demography reveals targets for conservation action. Proc. R. Soc. B. 288: http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.2955

Maintain and update the network of cooperating organisations and individuals
We provided advice and consultations to the national coordinators upon request, e. g., from Luxembourg, Ireland and Bulgaria.

We started to create a project, International Census Plots which aims to develop common bird monitoring schemes in southern and eastern Europe. Our colleagues in Serbia (Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia, BPSSS) started a pilot scheme in 2021. We regularly meet Serbian colleagues and assist them with designing the scheme. Up to date, 28 volunteers participated, who counted 33 transects. Based on the experience from Serbia in the pilot year 2021, we plan to develop the International Census Plots approach further and invite other countries to participate. Furthermore, as this initiative requires funding, we have been participating in the discussions within EBCC about a system of small grants to support the development of monitoring in southern and eastern Europe.

On 30 March, we organised the first PECBMS webinar (via Zoom) dedicated to the RTRIM shell. Over 40 participants, mainly national coordinators, attended the event. We also introduced a new communication forum in Slack pecbms.slack.com during the webinar, enabling sharing experience within the network.

You can read a short piece of news regarding the webinar.

Reporting and assistance to the main stakeholders of the project, administration

We continue to work on the EC tender called “Technical and scientific support in relation to the delivery and development of wild bird indicators for the EU “with the RSPB, Stichting BirdLife Europe, Catalan Institute for Ornithology (ICO), and University of East Anglia (UEA). We are in regular contact with the Tender Steering Committee. On 11 December, a Tender Steering Committee meeting took place. We reported on the project’s progress, discussed the actual policy needs and agreed on the plans for the following year.

On 8 March, we attended the interim EBCC Meeting, and we prepared a report for the EBCC Board Meeting on 19 April.

On 16 March, PECBMS Steering and Technical Group met via Zoom.

Personal

In January, we hired a new colleague Javier Rivas-Salvador, (who received Ph. D. in bird ecology at Charles University, Prague), experienced in R, to assist in data revision.

Jana Škorpilová and Anna Gamero have been working part-time on the data revision and PECBMS site-level dataset. Since June, Jana is back on board as a part-time employee.