One month left

41 tetrads done, 79 to go- Lets hope the weather improves a bit; The cold snap may well cause population changes across the region, because food is pretty hard to come by in many areas. And two points- few species and low numbers is itself important information, but the Atlas will use the maximum number for each species from the two counts. I think we ought to monitor winter populations in the same way as we do summer ones, and have been running a winter bird count to taht end for about ten years, but for the results to be significant it needs more support.

I have completed the tedious validation exercise, and queried some 170 records. Most of these are rarity records that need to be validated by the county recorder, which will take time. In future records will be validated as they come in, which will be much more efficient. If there is a query on your home page please react- and let me know that you have done so. The process of checking will take a while. But if you do see a species requiring a description, ie a rare bird, please send a description in to the county recorder at the same time as submitting the atlas record. This applies to Firecrest, inland Merlin, but not to Hobby. The full list is in the Avon Bird Report. The same applies in the Somerset area of the BTO region.