A Complete Winter and Breeding Tetrad
Atlas of Shropshire's Birds
Fieldwork for the national BTO atlas has now been completed and the results are eagerly awaited. However in Shropshire fieldwork for the local atlas is continuing for another two years. This decision has been made so that we can reach the same degree of coverage as was achieved when the first Shropshire breeding atlas was produced. This is necessary so that any changes in distribution that are apparent between the two breeding atlases are real and not due to differences in recording. The targets that were set for the previous breeding atlas had only been achieved in 57% of tetrads after the first 3 years fieldwork. An arbitrary minimum target of 40 species per tetrad was set for the winter season and after 4 years only 69% of tetrads have reached this level.
An Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Shropshire, published in 1992, and the last National Breeding Atlas (1993) and Winter Atlas (1985) published distribution maps for all species. We know that many of them have changed dramatically since then, and the Atlas Project intends to find out by how much. Locally we know Buzzard, Red Kite and Raven are spreading, but Lapwing are declining rapidly. We do not have much information about other species, so there will be many surprises.
Atlas maps provide the baseline for many Conservation policies, so this is a very important Project. Anyone interested in birds can make an important contribution.
For Further Information about the whole Atlas Project see here
For the latest fieldwork results see here
Help is still needed
In the winter you can easily make a very valuable contribution by finding species that have been overlooked. Many squares still lack records of common species as well as scarce and elusive birds.
In the breeding season, in addition to finding extra species we need to obtain the best possible breeding evidence, again this is lacking for many common species.
Please help!!
If you are interested, click here