Robins in the snow

Well, on your mantlepiece anyway. Happy Christmas everyone, and good birding up to 31st for all tetrads that have not yet had their first survey. A sponsored New year bird count is a good way to generate early second winter visits, but these should be limited to tetrads visited in November.
If you go to the Recent results on the website, and click on Regional Results, and click on Avon you can now see tetrad distribution of a selection of common species, based on tetrad results both from tetrad surveys and roving records. Some of the obvious gaps are from those who are putting in paper returns, not online ones, so that things are better than they look, and second visits will fill in a lot of the common species that are missing.
Incidentally if you put records on to Bird-track you can are asked to identify your site down to 1k, tetrad or 10k level so that the records can be used for the national atlas. I find I have identified my sites in a rather chaotic manner in the past.
279 tetrads ( of our 400) now have observers; future volunteers will do the breeding season followed by the winter season.
Early breeding. Some species- Owls, Raven, nest early, and if the weather is warm enough many otehrs can be stimulated into nesting activity, so that if there is clear evidence (nest building particularly) a breeding code letter can be entered on a winter visit form. It is also worth noting Rookery numbers and sites because a breeding season count is asked for. This is best done in early April before leafing, so that tetrads with rookeries shoudl be surveyed early in the breeding season if possible