Carry-over effects from passage regions are more important than breeding climate in determining the breeding phenology and performance of three avian migrants of conservation concern

Migrant birds are likely to be particularly vulnerable to climate change because they can be affected by changing conditions on the breeding grounds, wintering grounds or passage areas in between. Many long distance migrants that breed in the UK and winter in Africa are in severe decline, and previous BTO work has shown this can be related to changing conditions in Africa, which affect overwinter survival, as well as to conditions on British breeding grounds. BTO research published last year showed that although conditions in Africa can ‘carry-over’ and affect the timing of nesting in this country, the most important factor influencing breeding was spring temperature in the UK.

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Introducing the R-package 'birdring'

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Saving the Spoon-billed Sandpiper: an update on the conservation programme

Large-scale spatial analysis of ringing and re-encounter data to infer movement patterns: A review including methodological perspectives

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Great skua (Stercorarius skua) movements at sea in relation to marine renewable energy developments

Scotland has a target to generate 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. The country therefore has a large number of offshore sites where marine renewable developments (including wind, wave and tidal-stream installations) are proposed or under construction. As any existing developments have only become operational in recent years, and are only few in number, the effect they have on marine ecosystems is not yet properly understood.

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