New Hertfordshire Bird Atlas

Starting in November 2007 and running for four years, the Herts Bird Club will be collecting data to produce a new county bird atlas, surveying all 491 tetrads (2km x 2km squares) that include part of the county. This project will run alongside, and use the same methods as, Bird Atlas 2007-11 - the British Trust for Ornithology / BirdWatch Ireland / Scottish Ornithologists Club atlas of the birds of the whole of Britain and Ireland. Read more

The populations and distributions of Britain's birds are in a constant state of flux, as changes in the habitat and climate impact all aspects of their lifecycle. Only by monitoring where, when and in what numbers are our birds using the variety of habitats and resources within the county can we hope to understand these impacts.

Annual monitoring schemes, such as the BTO/RSPB/JNCC Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) operate by counting birds in randomly selected squares and provide yearly measures of population change. At the county level this gives only a broad indication of the changes in a relatively small number of species. Atlas projects complement the BBS by providing comprehensive information on the distribution of birds, covering far more squares than BBS.

The new Hertfordshire atlas will comprise the first systematic assessment of the distribution of birds in the county in winter and the third breeding season atlas, updating the distribution maps for 1988-92 published in The Breeding Birds of Hertfordshire and reproduced in interactive format on this website.

Breeding Season Coverage Map Added

As the breeding season gets underway and fieldwork for this part of the project starts to accumulate breeding evidence, you can keep track of progress on the breeding season coverage map. This reflects Timed Tetrads Visits and Roving Records submitted online to the Bird Atlas 2007-11 website.

Please note where there are gaps in coverage and consider visiting those less-frequented parts of the county and submitting Roving Records.

It will take a while before the first results for the breeding season are added to this website, as we are heavily dependent upon web development resources at the BTO headquarters to provide the data transfer functionality.

29 April 2008

More Winter Atlas Data Now Available

A second batch of records for the new winter atlas has now been loaded to this website. The First Winter Atlas maps now include all data submitted online to the Bird Atlas 2007-11 website up until 29 Feb 2008. Records from Timed Tetrad Visits in 185 tetrads and Roving Records from a futher 204 tetrads are included. These maps do not yet include data received on paper forms, although the coverage map does reflect those submitted via the Hertfordshire organiser.

A number of observers have been attributing their BirdTrack records to an individual tetrad, and this has provided another valuable source of information, with records from 76 tetrads.

Please note that these results are provisional and some records may subsequently be removed if they are found to be mis-identifications or data entry errors. This data validation process will not take place until all the first winter data have been received, including the paper records.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far. A total of 12892 individual records from 394 tetrads are already helping to further our knowledge of winter bird distributions in Hertfordshire.

28 April 2008