Monday, April 20, 2009

BTO atlas - 1st summer




We apologise for being out of contact with everyone regarding the BTO atlas. We have been working away in the background, and have managed to produce this map from last summer's data. The dark blue dots show the areas with lots of species recorded, the white dots where few species are recorded, and a lot of obvious blanks where we'd really like you to do some recording.
This data was sent to us as a spreadsheet last November, so there may well be some data that went in later, especially from paper forms, that aren't included. Also not included are records without breeding codes. Recording whether the bird is in suitable breeding habitat, singing, etc is just as valuable as records of definite nesting.

With regard to timed tetrad counts, there are still twenty or so tetrads available, particularly in SM83, SM93, and SN23. For those of you who have volunteered to do timed tetrads, please remember to do the first visit before the end of May, and the second before the end of July. Records of early breeding birds, or late breeding birds, outside of the April to July period are also useful.

Thanks for all your work so far, and we look forward to producing updated maps full of lots of dots later this year.