The results of the latest completed Small Grant Fund project from Serbia are in! Thanks to our support, the Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia (BPSSS) has collected invaluable data that will enrich the upcoming Atlas of Breeding Birds of Serbia. The project primarily conducted surveys of poorly known forest birds and the first census of Collared Sand Martin colonies in Serbia. Based on sampling effort and encounter rates, the Collared Flycatcher was the only target species classified as widespread and “common”. At the same time, Red-breasted Flycatcher, Wood Warbler, and Semi-collared Flycatcher remain highly rare, localised, and sporadic breeding species within Serbia. Unfortunately, the survey has confirmed a significant long-term decline in the Collared Sand Martin population.
The results of a new study show that spatial structure is a persistent and fundamental feature of biodiversity, but it depends strongly on scale, does not change uniformly over time, and varies across species and ecological contexts. This has important implications for conservation planning (e.g., identifying biodiversity hotspots), ecological modelling (where spatial dependence must be accounted for), and understanding how biodiversity responds to long-term environmental change.
The Farmland Bird Indicator (FBI) has been one of the few indicators relevant to biodiversity within the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It is the most robust biodiversity indicator used by Eurostat. The indicator shows the performance of common bird species characteristic of farmland and thus informs on the state of overall biodiversity in farmland. Therefore, the EBCC wishes to express its concern about the potential removal of biodiversity indicators post-2027 CAP and the EU budget performance framework.
As Europe’s landscapes continue to change, many farmland birds — once widespread and familiar — are quietly vanishing. Identifying where these declines occur, how rapidly, and why is vital for protecting biodiversity and guiding effective environmental policies. A recent scientific study, utilising data collected through the EBCC network and published in Conservation Biology, offers a valuable new tool: the ability to generate regular, high‑resolution maps illustrating changes in the probability of farmland bird occurrences across Europe.
We are pleased to announce that the Proceedings of the 23rd conference of the European Bird Census Council (EBCC), titled “Bird Numbers 2025: Synergies in monitoring for conservation”, have now been published in the Environmental and Experimental Biology open access journal. The articles offer brief insights into the topics presented and discussed at the conference and are sure to provide readers with interesting information.
The European Bird Census Council (EBCC) will support two important initiatives in Armenia and Bosnia & Herzegovina through its Small Grant Fund (SGF). The scheme aims to strengthen bird monitoring activities in European countries where financial and technical capacity for large-scale monitoring programmes is often limited. These projects will contribute to improving knowledge about bird populations and supporting evidence-based conservation across the region.
The latest issue of Bird Census News is dedicated to acoustic monitoring and features eight new articles. Technical advances over the past decade have driven greater use and interest in passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) of birds. These developments have also raised questions about the current state of the art in PAM, the quality of available tools, and the use of PAM in bird monitoring. In this issue, we introduce the EBCC Acoustic Monitoring Group (AMOG), present survey results on the role of acoustic monitoring from coordinators across Europe, and highlight national examples of PAM use in either species-specific or common bird monitoring schemes. As acoustic monitoring is rapidly evolving, we hope this issue provides an exciting read!
This Bird Census News issue brings us three new articles, the first of which explores the use of historical bird records in Denmark and combining it with current atlas and monitoring data to draw conclusions on the changes in the avifauna within the last century, the second one from Belgium exploring the impact of Usutu virus on wild bird populations using the Common Bird Monitoring dataset, and finally an assessment of the status and conservation of Cinereous vulture in Armenia. Enjoy the read!
