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BTO Blueline
TREE PIPIT
Anthus trivialis

Tree Pipit © Peter Beaven
 

• Population
  changes

• Productivity
  trends

• Additional
  information
Conservation listings
Europe: no SPEC category (favourable conservation status in Europe, not concentrated in Europe)
UK: amber (>50% population decline but data possibly unrepresentative)
UK Biodiversity Action Plan: in preparation
Long-term trend
England: rapid decline
UK population size
74,400 territories in 2000 (1988–91 Atlas estimate updated using CBC/BBS trend: BiE04, APEP06)
Status summary
The species was moved from the green to the amber list in 2002, on the strength of its population decline. Tree Pipits occur in greatest abundance in Wales, northern England and Scotland, and thus the marked CBC decline between the two atlas periods may reflect the range contraction that occurred then in central and southeast England (Gibbons et al. 1993). Since 1994, CBC/BBS data have shown further severe decrease, especially in England. The causes of the population decline are unclear, but may be linked to changing forest structure, as new plantations mature, and reduced management of lowland woods (Fuller et al. 2005). Improvements have occurred in breeding performance, with an increase in brood size and a substantial decline in failure rates over the 17-day egg stage (13 days incubation and 4 days laying). Although the species has no European conservation listing, numbers have fallen widely in Europe since 1980 (PECBM 2006), and the mean change across all European countries during the 1990s was a significant decline (Sanderson et al. 2006).
 

Population changes
CBC/BBS England graph
 
BBS acknowledgement
 
BBS UK graph
BBS England graph
BBS Wales graph
 

Productivity trends
 
Clutch size graph
Brood size graph
Egg nest failure graph
Chick nest failure graph
Laying date graph

 

 

Insufficient data on CES
available for this species
 

Additional information
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This report should be cited as:
Baillie, S.R., Marchant, J.H., Crick, H.Q.P., Noble, D.G., Balmer, D.E., Barimore, C., Coombes, R.H.,
Downie, I.S., Freeman, S.N., Joys, A.C., Leech, D.I., Raven, M.J., Robinson, R.A. & Thewlis, R.M. (2007)
Breeding Birds in the Wider Countryside: their conservation status 2007.
BTO Research Report No. 487. BTO, Thetford. (http://www.bto.org/birdtrends)

Pages maintained by Susan Waghorn and Iain Downie: Last updated 3 January, 2008