Report on the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme, December 2018

Collection of national species indices
Regular collection of updated national species population trends and indices successfully passed off and national coordinators have sent us their data of some bird species for which we produced a European index.

Publication of new European species trends and common bird indicators
Species indices were used for computation of European wild bird indicators, for the period 1980 – 2016. The indicators were computed for Europe and its regions (West, North, Central & East and South Europe), whole EU, New and Old EU states, and BioGeo habitats. Indicators were computed for common farmland, common forest, and all common birds. The European species indices and common bird indicators will be published in early January 2019 at the website and also via a leaflet. Altogether, 28 countries provided their data for this update.
There will be several improvements in presentations of the results at the web site. For instance, you will be able to use a new function of showing confidence limits (Cl).

Site-level data
In addition to the regular request for national species indices, we are working on an update of site-level data, to be used for research purposes. Site-level data will be used both internally within PECBMS and in cooperation with external researchers. Any use of site-level data is however subject of approval by national coordinators.

Regional Farmland Bird Indicator
The explorations of ways how to develop the indicators at the regional (sub-national) level are finished. The main problem is a lack of both, standardized monitoring, and timed species lists data from the regions covering a sufficient period. We will discuss the outputs of this exercise at a dedicated mini-workshop in Spring 2019.

Forest bird indicator
We have been working also on a new forest bird indicator for EU policy purposes – aims, spatial and temporal scale of a new forest bird indicator were discussed and agreed with policy people, particularly with people from Forest Europe. A mini-workshop, where species selection will be discussed, is planned in March 201 (the event will be combined with a mini-workshop on regional Farmland Bird Indicator).

Development of online tools
An online tool for collecting TRIM output files from national coordinators including automatic data quality control is available and ready to use in next year’s data collection. Adaptation for RTRIM outputs will only be needed. A second tool, a pilot tool for the collection of site-level data, is under preparation.

Presentation of results, promotion and provision of assistance to stakeholders 

The new and improved PECBMS website is online from September 2018. The structure and overall layout of the website have been transformed to be more attractive, up to date, and user friendly. Among others, you can find here our electronic newsletters, which are quarterly produced on behalf of the EBCC and informing on related projects EBBA2 and EBP. Improvements in the web site are still going on and we appreciate feedback on the new web site.

The autumnal issue of the EBCC newsletter has been spread in September and was covered by a photo of the little ringed plover by Zdeněk Jakl. The winter issue has been published in December and the cover photo of coal tits and one marsh tit was taken by Ondřej Prosický 

Maaike de Jong gave a talk at the International Ornithological Congress 2018 in Vancouver, Canada.

We met with DG Agri in early October 2018 in Brussels. We clarified technical and methodological details of the production of the FBI.

Maintain and update the network of cooperating organizations and individuals
We maintain an extensive network of cooperating organisations and individuals across Europe. We currently have more than 350 contacts in our mailing list, including coordinators of national monitoring schemes, EBCC national delegates, and BirdLife partner organisations as well as policy people and decision-makers.

New coordinator
Since November the PanEuropean Common Bird Monitoring Scheme is coordinated by Eva Šilarová. Eva studied biology at Charles University in Prague with a focus on animal behaviour and finished her Ph. D. at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), where she specialised herself in the study of bird personalities.

The new PECBMS coordinator Eva Šilarová.