The Lincolnshire Bird Club

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve recently been appointed as the BTO Regional Representative for East Lincolnshire. This involves helping to organise BTO surveys in East Lincs and the major task at hand is to assist Mark Grantham in managing the completion of coverage for the BTO Bird Atlas.

The East Lincs region covers 19 10km squares. The region stretches from Louth to the coast in the north to Boston in the south and the western boundary runs north south from Swineshead through Woodhall Spa to Ludford. In 1990 the combined total of confirmed breeding species in all 19 squares was 1060 or an average of 56 per square. So far at the half way stage we have recorded an average of 30 per square so despite good progress, and thanks to everyone who has contributed, there is still a long way to go.

Records are coming in from TTVs, many of which have now been allocated, Roving Records and BirdTrack. What we really need now is to confirm breeding for as many species as possible in each 10km square: old timers amongst you will recognise this as the traditional Atlas approach. We’d like to get as many species confirmed as possible this year so we can then focus on the remaining gaps in the final year of coverage next year, 2011. Confirming breeding can be as simple as looking out for fledglings being fed by adults, and this will be particularly important for some of the harder to find groups, such as warblers and finches.

If you’d like to volunteer to take responsibility for confirming breeding in a particular 10km square, or for a particular species across part of the county, please drop me a personal message indicating which square or species you’d like and I’ll send you a list of what has been recorded in the square to date and which species need confirming as breeding. Alternatively you can call me on 07966 325380 or email me on philespin@live.co.uk.

I’ll be at the Bird Club AGM on 30 March hoping to recruit a volunteer to cover each square, so if you'd like to discuss what is involved please speak to me there.