Conservation listings

WBS and CBC/BBS trends for Coot indicate a long-term increase, although the magnitude of the change is not clear. Small CBC samples, mainly of birds on small water-bodies, suggested a rapid rise in the late 1960s. WBS and BBS both include more birds on larger waters, and so may be more representative of Coot populations, but WBS has not recorded the strong increase found by BBS observers since 1994. The combination of CBC and BBS data suggests that the long-term increase in the UK and England may have been rapid. Winter abundance on large still waters, as monitored by WeBS, has shown consistent moderate increases since the early 1980s at least (Pollitt et al. 2003).