RBBP guidelines on reporting rare breeders

05 May 2017 Little Egret by Jeff Lack

With the breeding season now in full swing, birdwatchers can contribute to the national recording of rare breeding birds by adding records to BirdTrack. By doing so, you can help the Rare Breeding Birds Panel to assess the changing status of these species, and inform conservation efforts to help them – for some species this is the only source of such data.

Each year around 90 rare species breed in the UK, ranging from relatively widespread ‘scarce breeders’ such as Shoveler, to extreme rarities such as Bee-eater. If you find any of these species in breeding habitat please use BirdTrack to record the site and the number seen, along with the highest level of breeding evidence noted and an assessment of how many breeding pairs may be present. Of course, these data will also be important in this, the last year of data collection for the second European Breeding Bird Atlas.



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