BirdTrends 2022: trends in numbers, breeding success and survival for UK breeding birds

Key findings

Species list

Following a sharp decline over the last ten years, Swallow now raises a lower level alert over both the 53-year and 25-year periods. Photograph by Edmund Fellowes.

Using the BirdTrends pages

The BTO's BirdTrends report is a one-stop shop for information about the population status of the common breeding birds of the wider UK countryside. The report is based on data gathered by the many thousands of volunteers who contribute to BTO-led surveys.

Previous BirdTrends reports, up to and including BirdTrends 2020, included species pages displaying the latest information on trends in population size, breeding performance and survival rates for 121 species, as measured by our long-term monitoring schemes.

The species information contained in previous BirdTrends reports has now been incorporated into BirdFacts, which now provides a one-stop easy-access location to review all the existing knowledge that is available about all the species found in the UK. All links to individual species in the BirdTrends report now point to the relevant species page in BirdFacts.

However, the BirdTrends report itself continues to provide an overall summary about the current trends in abundance and in breeding success of over 120 UK bird species, and is designed to be used in conjunction with the BirdFacts species pages.

The BirdTrends pages describe the field and analytical methods that were used to produce the results for each species and to identify alerts. We discuss overall patterns of trends in abundance and breeding success, and compare the latest trend information and alerts with the Birds of Conservation Concern list, last updated in 2021 (Stanbury et al. 2021).

Summary tables list alerts and population changes by scheme, and you can use our 'table generator' to select and display tables of population change to your own specification.

A detailed References section lists more than 820 of the most relevant recent publications, with onward links to abstracts or to full text where freely available, and is a valuable key to recent scientific work by BTO and other researchers. The Key findings page provides a brief overview of our main findings this year.

We would value your comments on this report and particularly any suggestions on how it can be improved:

info [at] bto.org (Email your comments)

Authors

These web pages constitute an annual report that is part of the BTO Research Report series. Authors were Dario Massimino, Ian Woodward, Sarah Harris, Dave Leech, David Noble, Ruth Walker, Carl Barimore, Stephen Baillie and Rob Robinson. The recommended citation for the report is as follows, and is given in the page footer throughout the report:

Massimino, D., Woodward, I.D., Hammond, M.J., Barber, L., Barimore, C., Harris, S.J., Leech, D.I., Noble, D.G., Walker, R.H., Baillie, S.R. & Robinson, R.A. (2023) BirdTrends 2022: trends in numbers, breeding success and survival for UK breeding birds. Research Report 753. BTO, Thetford. www.bto.org/birdtrends

 

This report should be cited as: Massimino, D., Woodward, I.D., Hammond, M.J., Barber, L., Barimore, C., Harris, S.J., Leech, D.I., Noble, D.G., Walker, R.H., Baillie, S.R. & Robinson, R.A. (2020) BirdTrends 2020: trends in numbers, breeding success and survival for UK breeding birds. BTO Research Report 732. BTO, Thetford. www.bto.org/birdtrends