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.

June 2009 Data Refresh

All the paper records for the 2008/09 winter season have now been loaded into the Bird Atlas 2007-11 database at BTO headquarters and new data for both the winter and breeding seasons has been transferred to this website. The maps may be accessed via the New Winter Atlas map index or New Breeding Atlas map index pages. Alternatively, you can access the data by tetrad by clicking through the status maps.

This refresh also includes all data entered to the Bird Atlas 2007-11 website by 18 June 2009, including TTV data that was entered online.

23 June 2009

New Breeding Season Begins

Fieldwork for the second breeding season of this four-year project starts on 1 April 2009. This will build on the excellent achievements in the 2008 season when 182 paired Timed Tetrad Visits were completed and supplemental Roving Records were collected from a further 259 tetrads.

The priority for this season should be completion of outstanding Timed Tetrad Visits and extra field visits to the allocated tetrads to improve the breeding status. Multiple visits will be needed to cover different species which breed at different times as the season progresses.

The March 2009 newsletter is available to download from the Resources page.

31 March 2009

More Winter 2009 TTV Data and Breeding Season Record Cards Now Available

New data for the winter season is now available on this website via the New Winter Atlas map index page. Alternatively, you can access the data by tetrad by clicking through the Winter Season Status Map.

This refresh includes all data entered to the Bird Atlas 2007-11 website by 24 Feb 2009, including TTV data that was entered online. In all this comprises 7268 unique species registrations from Timed Tetrad Visits in 309 tetrads and a further 7823 unique Roving Records from 450 tetrads.

The breeding season maps have also been refreshed to include all a small number of late records entered online since 13 Jan 2009.

In preparation for the second year of Breeding Season fieldwork, customised recording cards are now available from the tetrad pages.

10 March 2009

Customised Recording Forms Now Available

In preparation for the second season of winter fieldwork, new functionality has been added to this website to allow you to print a custiomised recording form for any tetrad. This has the recording date shaded out for those species which have already been recorded, allowing you to focus on finding the remaining species. For example, despite an excellent species list, the Great Amwell tetrad (TL31R) still has a few missing species as shown on its Recording Card.

14 October 2008