The species of birds seen in the BOS includes residents, summer visitors, winter visitors, passage migrants and vagrants. This page shows the species seen regularly in the BOS, that is those that have been seen almost every year from 2000-2019. There are currently 130 such species. For each species the following information is provided:

  • The number of years seen from 2000 to 2019
  • The number of months each year the species is seen. This helps to distinguish visitors from residents.
  • % Of Months - the percentage of the 240 months under review that the species has been recorded as being present. This provides an additional measure of occurence, though it is less accurate for species that we do not fully record. This figure is not provided for species we do not regularly record, i.e. very common species.
  • Records - the number of records we hold for this species since 1982
  • Max Count - the maximum number of birds seen in a 1 km square per day
  • 1km squares - the number of 1km squares the species has been recorded in. This gives a measure of the distribution. There are 1200km squares in the BOS area.
  • Rank - this is a number to sort the birds into Taxonomic order, as defined by the IOC

 Note that you can sort the list by any of the column values, such as by species name, by clicking on the column heading.

UK currently holds approximately a quarter of the global Curlew population, with estimates for England of about 30,000 pairs. National monitoring data show that this population has been in long-term decline since the 1970s and has almost halved in the UK over the last 20 years. In lowland southern England, the population has declined to about 500 pairs, with many colonies on the verge of local extinction. Read more ...

Great Black-backed Gulls: from populations to individuals  -  Sam Langlois from BTO Scotland

The Great Black-backed Gull is one of the North Atlantic’s most conspicuous and largest seabirds — yet much of its ecology remains poorly understood. This talk will present new insights into global population trends and foraging ecology, focusing on diet and GPS tracking studies undertaken on the Isle of May, Scotland.  Read more ...

Our annual winter count, carried out by teams of observers in each of the twelve 10km square, to record the number of bird species seen between 8am and 4pm.   Read more ...

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