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Trends of common birds in Europe, 2010 update
This report presents an updated population trends and indices of 137 European common bird species for the time period 1980 - 2008 that have been produced by the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme (PECBMS) in 2010.
Updated indicators for Europe and its regions based on data till 2008 can be found here.
Acknowledgements
First of all, we want to thank the many thousands of skilled volunteer counters who have been collecting species count data year by year in the field.
Special thanks go to the data providers & organisations as well that are responsible for national data collection and analysis, and provide us with valuable advises and various support: Norbert Teufelbauer, Christian Vansteenwegen, Anne Weiserbs, Jean-Paul Jacob, Anny Anselin, Jean-Yves Paquet, Thierry Kinet, Antoine Derouaux, Svetoslav Spasov, Iordan Hristov, Zdeněk Vermouzek, Josef Chytil, Henning Heldbjerg, Anne Eskildsen, Andres Kuresoo, Jaanus Elts, Risto A. Väisänen, Frédéric Jiguet, Johannes Schwarz, Martin Flade, Tibor Szép, Olivia Crowe, Dick Coombes, Lorenzo Fornasari, Elisabetta de Carli, Guido Tellini Florenzano, Ainārs Auniņą, Ieva Mārdega, Ruud P.B. Foppen, Chris van Turnhout, Magne Husby, Przemysław Chylarecki, Barbara Archita, Tomasz Chodkiewicz, Ricardo Martins, Ana Meirinho, Geoff Hilton, Jozef Ridzoň, Katarína Slabeyová, Juan Carlos del Moral, Virginia Escandell, Åke Lindström, Hans Schmid, David G. Noble, Kate Risely, Andrew Joys.
We are very grateful to Arco Van Strien, Adriaan Gmelig Meyling and Thomas van der Meij who contributed with final data analysis and computation procedure, and to Tomáą Telenský who helped very much with this web presentation.
We thank Richard Gregory, Ian Burfield, Lukáą Viktora, Norbert Schäffer, David W. Gibbons, Jose Tavares, Sergi Herrando, Dominique Richard and Anne Teller for valuable comments and help with data collation, analysis and for general support.
Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme is a joint initiative of the European Bird Census Council (EBCC) and BirdLife International. Since its beginning in 2002, the PECBMS project has been supported by the the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB, the BirdLife International Partner in the UK). Since January 2006 the project has been funded by the European Commission as well. Sole responsibility lies with the authors and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained in this document.
Other important partners of the project are: Statistics Netherlands, Czech Society for Ornithology (CSO, BirdLife Partner in the Czech Republic), British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Dutch Organisation for Field Ornithology (SOVON), and others.
Data
National monitoring schemes coordinators usually provide data on more than 200 species, however, data on many species are not high-quality and European index cannot be produced. In 2010, reliable European index was produced on 137 species including one new species (Dendrocopus medius). Number of countries contributing with the data remained unchanged since last year. National species indices from Spain has been provided for the two year shorter time period (1998-2008, instead of 1996 onwards) compared to the last year for the reasons of lower quality of data in first two years.
The 22 countries providing the data for 2010 update are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.
The countries provided the data for different time periods (see the special report or check the ´List of countries´ at the individual species graphs).
Methods
At first, individual national species indices are produced by annually operated national breeding bird surveys from 22 European countries that cover different periods and are obtained through the PECBMS. These national species indices are computed using a software package named TRIM which allows for missing counts in the time series and yields unbiased yearly indices and standard errors using Poisson regression. The next step is the hierarchical combination of national indices into supranational ones (regional or European indices). This combination is also computed in the TRIM and in doing so, the national indices are weighted by estimates of national species population sizes (derived from Birds in Europe 2 (BirdLife International 2004)). Weighting is used because different countries hold different proportions of each species´ European population. Although national schemes differ in field methods, these differences do not influence the supranational results because the indices are standardised before being combined. More detailed information on computation methods and data quality control is summarized in special report (see).
The computation methods are also described in papers from van Strien et al. (2001) and Gregory et al. (2005).
Species habitat classification for main habitat types (farmland, forest and other) have been developed using improved procedure accepted at the PEBCMS workshop in Prague in 2005. This procedure is based on species classification within four main biogeographical regions: Atlantic, Boreal, Continental and Mediterranean. Species habitat classification has not undergone any changes since last year, details on species classification procedure can be found here.
Results
Updated European species indices, long-/short-term trends and slopes, and species habitat classification are summarized in the table (for explanations to the table see Explanations below the table).
For showing the graph of a species index, click the species name in the table. For drawing and comparing graphs for several species at once, tick the check boxes at left side of species names and press ENTER or click Show graphs for selected species button below the table to confirm and proceed your selection. You can also draw graphs for all species at once (Select all) or quickly deselect your choice (Reset). The list of countries and time periods for they provided the data for each species can be found at individual species graphs (List of countries).
For comparison, the previous version of European species indices produced in 2009 for the time period 1980-2007 can be found here.
Despite the data quality control, quality of outputs might differ species by species. Furthermore, year to year fluctuations might not always reflect real population change. Therefore we recommend cautious interpretation of year by year changes and readers should also pay attention to species legend. For any use of the results presented in this report, we strongly recommend to consult PECBMS coordination unit (EuroMonitoring
birdlife.cz).
Species scientific and common names follow the BirdLife Checklist, Version 3 (BirdLife International 2010).
Explanations
Species notes:
1) Data for Long-term Trend and Long-term Slope not available.
2) Data for Long-term Trend and Long-term Slope available over the period 1982-2008.
3) Data for Long-term Trend and Long-term Slope available over the period 1984-2008.
4) Data for Short-term Trend and Short-term Slope available over the period 1991-2008.
5) Data for Short-term Trend and Short-term Slope available over the period 1998-2008.
6) Data for Short-term Trend and Short-term Slope available over the period 1999-2008.
7) Data for Short-term Trend and Short-term Slope available over the period 2005-2008.
a) Trend1980(%) and Trend1990(%) - change (in %) in an index value between the first and the last year of a time period. Trend1980(%), i.e. long-term Trend, is computed over the period 1980-2008, Trend1990(%), i.e. short-term Trend, is computed over the period 1990-2008, if not noted otherwise in the Species notes.
b) Slope - multiplicative trend over a time period considered, reflects average percentage change per year. If the slope value is 1, there is no trend. If > 1, there is a positive trend, if < 1, trend is negative. For instance, 1.08 means 8 % increase per year, 0.93 means 7 % decline per year. Slope standard errors (SE) are in parenthesis. Long-term Slope is computed over the period 1980-2008, Short-term Slope is computed over the period 1990-2008, if not noted otherwise in the Species notes.
c) Habitat
for - forest
farm - farmland
oth - other
Contact
Petr Voříąek, PECBMS project coordinator
Czech Society for Ornithology, Na Bělidle 34, CZ-150 00 Prague 5, Czech Republic, phone +420 257212465, e-mail: EuroMonitoring
birdlife.cz.References
- Van Strien, A.J. Pannekoek, J. & Gibbons, D.W. 2001. Bird Study 48: 200-213.
- BirdLife International 2004. Birds in Europe: population estimates, trends and conservation status. Cambridge, UK: BirdLife International. (BirdLife Conservation Series No. 12).
- BirdLife International 2010. The BirdLife checklist of the birds of the world, with conservation status and taxonomic sources. Version 3. (http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species).
- Gregory, R.D., van Strien, A.J., Vorisek, P., Gmelig Meyling, A.W., Noble, D.G., Foppen, R.P.B. & Gibbons, D.W. 2005. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 360: 269-288.