Understanding how human activities influence biodiversity change at different spatial scales is one of the key questions in our attempts to tackle biodiversity loss. This study, using the most comprehensive dataset of its kind, sought to understand the drivers of population change in European birds.

In this study, BTO scientists mapped large fires that occurred over a 19-year period in Polesia, a region containing some of Europe’s last pristine peatlands and lowland forests in Eastern Europe. Fires are of great concern to policymakers in the region due to the economic and health costs, and a lot of resources are used to suppress fires during hot and dry years. There are potentially natural solutions to fires, however, that could also benefit birds, biodiversity and climate issues. These ‘nature-based’ solutions include restoring drained wetlands. In this study, freely-available satellite data were used to explore the prevalence of large fires and the factors causing them. This allowed researchers to explore whether restoring the landscape’s wetlands could reduce the increasing risk of large, damaging fires as the climate changes.

When ringing birds it is usually important to standardise measurements so that sources of error are minimised. For example, trainee ringers are taught how to measure wing lengths in the most repeatable fashion. Measuring bird weight is usually much more straightforward. One situation where this may not be the case is during canon netting when large numbers of birds can be caught at once, but are weighed gradually as the birds are processed, potentially leading to biases. This paper examines this phenomenon using captures of Knot, Turnstone, Dunlin and Semipalmated Sandpiper in Delaware Bay, USA. As these waders were caught whilst actively feeding on the eggs of Horseshoe Crabs, there was the possibility that birds weighed first could be heavier due to having a gut full of eggs, whilst those weighed last may have digested/voided their gut contents prior to being weighed and so weigh relatively less. For sample bird catches birds were weighed repeatedly, from immediately after capture to up to four hours after capture. The study found that birds rapidly lost up to 5% of their body weight in the first 30 minutes, with weight loss much reduced thereafter. This weight loss was strongly correlated to the number of droppings birds produced in the keeping pens, indicating the reduction was related to processing of gut contents. The paper shows how body weights can be standardised to that expected if each bird was weighed at 30 minutes after capture. For large catches this can increase the apparent mean weight for the sample by up to 2%. The paper also discusses the situations in which standardising body weight measurements for time from capture may be necessary.