Module 5 bird populations and countryside change

Photo: T Holden © BTO

Improving the understanding of relationships between breeding birds and their habitats in Britain's wider countryside.

• Click here to access the final report for this module

Many bird populations in the British countryside have undergone large declines in recent years, and we have only a partial understanding of why this has occurred.

In this new module of the Countryside Survey, breeding birds have been surveyed during the spring and summer of 2000, in a large number of the 1km squares which were intensively recorded during the field survey in 1998/99. The project will establish a bird-habitat database and undertake preliminary analysis of relationships between abundance of bird species and the habitat/landscape composition and change. The database will underpin the development of models designed to predict how future changes in land-use will affect the abundance of breeding birds.

The objectives are to:

• estimate abundance of breeding birds in a large sample (at least 400) of the CS200 sample squares.

• provide qualitative descriptions of bird assemblages associated with ITE land classes

• undertake a preliminary analysis of gradients and patterns in bird populations in 1km sample squares, and adjacent squares, in relation to landscape and habitat characteristics

• create a 'bird abundance' dataset within the CS2000 database. To provide outputs compatible with the Countryside Information System (CIS)

• identify key habitat and landscape variables that are important in determining bird abundance and make recommendations for the collection of such data within the Breeding Bird survey.

The Survey is managed by the British Trust for Ornithology, (BTO) working in collaboration with CEH; and the field work was completed by the end of June 2000. A transect method was used to record bird populations, similar to that used in the highly successful BTO/RSPB/JNCC* Breeding Bird Survey - the national monitoring scheme for bird populations in Britain.