The European Bird Census Council has set up a Small Grant Fund (SGF) to support national bird monitoring activities, particularly in Europe’s low- and middle-income countries. In 2024, the EBCC Board selected three projects as priorities for support. The projects come from three countries and request nearly 30,000 euros in total. As the EBCC’s resources are insufficient to fund all projects selected for support, we kindly ask individuals or organisations to donate and help us support the projects.
During 2010–2018, 798 students from nine European countries participated in the combined field and online teaching program in bird identification arranged by Nord University. The research method was an online bird identification test (www.birdid.no) at the beginning of the study, an online test and a field test (point count) at the end of the field teaching period, and an online exam at the end of the study. The results showed great progress from the beginning to the exam at the end of the study, measured on the 61 students who completed all four tests in 2018.
The 23rd conference of the European Bird Census Council (EBCC) "Bird Numbers 2025: Synergies in monitoring for conservation" will be held from 31 March to 4 April 2025 in Riga, the capital of Latvia. The conference will be organised by the University of Latvia with support from the Latvia Ornithological Society. The abstract submission is now open. The deadline for oral presentations is September 30, and for poster presentations – January 15, 2025.
Martin Abbas Hellicar, a highly respected and beloved advocate for the environment and one of BirdLife International's most committed conservation leaders as the Director of BirdLife Cyprus, tragically passed away on June 15, 2024. Today, we bring three memories of this unforgettable man and friend from his colleagues.
On 13 May 2024, researchers from the EBCC and BirdLife International published a new paper about European bird population estimates. The article can be openly accessed in the journal Bird Conservation International. Population sizes collated in the European Red List of Birds (ERLoB), and the abundances compiled in the European Breeding Bird Atlas 2 are compared at country and continental levels to find ways to improve the process of estimating bird populations in Europe.
EBCC is inviting new applications to the Small Grant Fund, which aims to support national bird monitoring activities by EBCC partner organisations in low—and middle-income countries in Europe.
The publication of the European Breeding Bird Atlas 2 (EBBA2) represented a milestone for European ornithology. Developing a European atlas takes time, and 30 years elapsed between EBBA1 and EBBA2. Updating data on species’ distributions on a more frequent basis and ensuring that they are harmonised across Europe could complement the role of atlases. The European Bird Census Council (EBCC) has started the project EBBA Live, which attempts to fill in this gap of information for as many species as possible. This ambitious project has started with a pilot project on farmland birds, which is called EBBA Live Farmland.
The EBCC Annual General Meeting will be held on 16 April 2024 at 19:00 CEST. The meeting will begin with an administrative part, followed by reports on EBCC activities in 2023 and several short presentations by EBCC National delegates. It is open to all people interested in EBCC.
Two major achievements for Portuguese ornithology were published in the past month of December. First, the III Portuguese Breeding Bird Atlas updated the distribution for 241 species (227 for the continent, 35 for the Azores and 44 in Madeira) and compared the distribution patterns among two atlases for the first time. This information was also fundamental to reviewing the Bird Red List (only for the Continental part of Portugal) published in 2005.
In 2017, DDA (Dachverband Deutscher Avifaunisten), together with its partners, decided to restructure the German Rare Breeding Bird Survey to ‒ step by step ‒ develop a monitoring scheme that delivers site-based data, provide Germany-wide standardised field methods, follows a modular approach and enables a mobile digital data collection and transmission.
