European Bird Census Council

This report presents the fifth update of the European wild bird indicators produced by the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS). The indicators cover the period until the year 2007 and are computed for Europe and its regions (West, North, Central & East and South Europe), and EU, New and Old EU states for common farmland, common forest, and all common birds. Both single European and BioGeo regional species habitat classification are used to assess if each bird species belongs to farmland, forest or other habitat. The report also briefly describes methods used for computation of indices and indicators and sources of data.

John A. Wiens kindly provided his reflective essay on how monitoring is unfortunately still judged many times. The essay, as published in Bulletin of the British Ecological Society 2009: 40/2, can be downloaded here.

This report presents an enlarged set of population trends and indices of 136 common bird species in Europe which have been produced by the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) in 2009. The trends and indices presented in this report cover time period 1980 - 2007, although data back to 60s are available from some European countries. Updated indicators for Europe and its regions based on data till 2007 are published on the EBCC website as well (see the special report).

In order to improve communication between the Board and the Delegates, a short newsletter with information on major projects, conferences and other events will be regularly produced and distributed to all Delegates, starting in 2008. Most information is described in more detail elsewhere on the EBCC website. Previous newsletters can be viewed below.

A new PECBMS report ´The State of Europe´s Common Birds 2008´ was published in June 2009.