The Lincolnshire Bird Club

I have noticed an increasing number of reports on the "Sightings" Forum mention 4 or 5 less common species and finish up with "plus the usual." When I started birding I never imagined that the numbers of House Sparrows or Starlings for instance would decline as rapidly as they have. I would suggest that observers report the number of individuals of every species they see so that the LBC (courtesy of Colin and Sheila) have a lasting record and may be alerted to a significant decline/abundance of "common" birds.

Certainly a valid point Stuart, common species can often be taken forgranted shall we say as rarer species can more easily capture the imagination and spark interest. As you rightly point out however many previously common species have shown drastic declines and as such demand the attention of anyone concerned with the conservation not just of birds but the wider countryside. In order to build a genuine impression of bird populations in Lincolnshire and monitor any significant fluctuations records of more common species must be given an increased value.

Hi guys

You are both right and I thought you might be interested in a project Andrew Chick and I have been working on for the 2010 Bird report.

Common species are not well covered in the report at present but we have a potential solution. Kate Risely who runs the UK BBS survey for BTO has kindly amalgamated the data held by BTO for all BBS squares in Lincolnshire and South Humberside into a combined dataset, which covers the period from 1994 to 2010. In the 5 year period to 2010 an average of 70 randomly selected BBS 1km squares were surveyed in each year.

We are hoping Kate will be able to produce indices of annual change for the commonest species which we will be able to depict as graphs of smoothed annual change so we can see how Lincolnshire populations are doing against the population for England as a whole. At the moment it looks like there are 23 species in that category.

If we can encourage greater take up of BBS amongst bird club members, we should in future years be able to expand the number of species included.

Hi Phil

Sounds very interesting and is no doubt a good step towards gaining a better idea of population changes among our more common species, importantly it will also put them into context against national trends so may make very interesting reading. Greater BBS coverage would be a real bonus, took on first square this year and really enjoyed taking part so can thoroughly recommend it to others. Hope to take on a few more squares for next year.

Rgds

Joe