The risk of extinction for birds in Great Britain

The UK has lost seven species of breeding birds in the last 200 years. Conservation efforts to prevent this from happening to other species, both in the UK and around the world, are guided by species’ priorities lists, which are often informed by data on range, population size and the degree of decline or increase in numbers. These are the sorts of data that BTO collects through its core surveys.

Flight Lines: Tracking the wonders of bird migration

This stunning new book brings together the latest research findings, delivered through an accessible and engaging narrative by the BTO's Mike Toms, with the wonderful artwork generated through the BTO/SWLA Flight Lines project. If you have an interest in our summer migrants, then you'll welcome this fantastic opportunity to discover their stories through art and the written word.

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Bird Photographer of the Year 2017

This beautiful book accompanies the photographic competition celebrating some of the best bird photography of the year.

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The Breeding Bird Survey 2016

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Predicting the impacts of wind farms on seabirds: An individual-based model

1. Individual-based models (IBMs) are a powerful tool in predicting the consequences of environmental change on animal populations and supporting evidence-based decision making for conservation planning.2. There are increasing proposals for wind farms in UK waters and seabirds are a vulnerable group, which may be at risk from these developments.3. We developed a spatially explicit IBM to investigate the potential impacts of the installation of wind farms in the English Channel and North Sea on body mass, productivity and mortality of a breeding population of Northern gannets for which we have tracking data.4. A baseline model with no wind farms accurately represented the status of a sample of tracked gannets at the end of the 90-day chick-rearing period, and the behaviourtime budget was similar to that of tracked gannets.5. Model simulations in the presence of wind farms indicated that installations should have little impact on the gannet population, when either avoidance behaviour or collision risk scenarios were simulated. Furthermore, wind farms would need to be ten times larger or in more highly used areas in order to have population-level impacts on Alderney’s gannets.6. Synthesis and applications. Our spatially explicit individual-based models (IBM) highlight that it is vital to know the colony-specific foraging grounds of seabirds that may be impacted, when identifying potential wind farm sites, in order to account for cumulative impacts from multiple sites. Avoiding areas highly used for foraging and commuting, and avoiding large-scale developments should be effective in limiting gannet mortality as a result of collision, competition and energy expenditure. Our IBM provides a robust approach which can be adapted for other seabird populations or to predict the impacts from other types of spatial change in the marine environment.