Andrew Stanbury

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds · Conservation Science

This paper provides updated status assessments for 28 species of current or former breeding seabird in the United Kingdom by way of a two-stage addendum to Birds of Conservation Concern 5: firstly, a pre-H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) baseline and, secondly, an examination of apparent HPAI impacts to date. Two species were classed as...

Full text is available at: www.stateofnature.org.uk/countries/scotland

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For 50 years, the Rare Breeding Birds Panel (RBBP) has collated records of the rarest breeding birds in the UK and provided, through an annual report published in British Birds, a summary of their status and trends. Here, we summarise the evolution of the Panel and the growth in the volume and completeness of its reporting. The model established in...

The 5th review of Birds of Conservation Concern (BoCC5) in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man assessed and assigned 245 species to updated Red, Amber and Green lists of conservation concern and shows a continued decline in the status of our bird populations. Seventy species (29% of those assessed) are now on the Red list; almost double the 36...

The 5th version of Birds of Conservation Concern reviews the status of all regularly occurring birds in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. Breeding and overwintering bird species have been assessed against a set of objective criteria and placed on the Green, Amber or Red lists to indicate their level of conservation concern.

Many species of long-distance Afro-palearctic migrant birds that breed in Europe are showing severe population declines and there is a need to understand in which parts of the migratory cycle the drivers of decline occur. Building on previous research that suggests that widespread Whinchat Saxicola rubetra declines across the European range are not...

This is the fourth review of the status of birds in Ireland. Two hundred and eleven species were assessed and assigned to the Red, Amber or Green list of conservation concern. The criteria mainly follow previous assessments of conservation status at global and European levels; and within Ireland, include historical decline, trends in population and...

The State of Nature report 2019 presents an overview of how wildlife is faring in the UK and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. Additionally, it assesses the pressures that are acting on nature, and the responses being made, collectively, to counter these pressures.

For more than half a century, the Western Eurasian Crane (Grus grus grus) has been expanding its range toward western Europe, recolonizing areas where it had been previously driven to extinction, including the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark. The Western Eurasian Crane is, on the one hand, a very mobile, migratory species, but on the other, is terr...

First confirmed case of two successfully fledged Hawfinch broods by the same female in a single season. Includes details of Hawfinch breeding ecology derived by following radio-tagged females across five breeding seasons in England and Wales and a literature review of previous records relating to Hawfinch nesting.

Understanding and predicting a species' distribution across a landscape is of central importance in ecology, biogeography, and conservation biology. However, it presents daunting challenges when populations are highly dynamic (i.e. increasing or decreasing their ranges), particularly for small populations where information about ecology and life hi...

Capsule: Nest success rate of Hawfinches Coccothraustes coccothraustes within our study areas averaged 36% across five seasons, a level unlikely to be driving population declines and considerably higher than was suggested by recent estimates from the long-term Nest Record Scheme. Aims: To investigate potential habitat correlates of nest success and...

Understanding population dynamics requires knowledge of the differential effects of survival, productivity and dispersal on population growth. This is particularly important for the conservation of small and recently established populations, where stochastic births and deaths may result in negative growth and even extinction. Here, we investigated...

Capsule: The first national survey for Snow Bunting Plectrophenax nivalis in the UK was carried out in 2011 and estimated the breeding population at 60 territories (95% confidence intervals = 48–83). Aims: To estimate breeding population size for Snow Buntings in the UK by surveying all sites with a history of breeding season occupation. Methods: S...

Over the last 20 years, species priorities for bird conservation in the UK have been guided by the in-depth 'Birds of Conservation Concern' assessments. For other wildlife, priorities tend to be informed by measures of extinction risk, generated by the IUCN Regional Red List process. We carried out the first formal IUCN assessment for birds in Grea...

1. Building on the significant conservation concern for waders breeding in in-bye farmland in England, this project assessed the importance of in-bye land and the management thereof under agri-environment schemes (AESs) for these species, using a combination of analyses of existing data sets and a new survey of the relevant habitats in 2016. The fo...

Invasive alien vertebrates (IAVs) pose a significant threat to island biodiversity worldwide, and their removal is an important nature conservation management goal. As methods advance, eradications from larger islands and of multiple species simultaneously are increasingly undertaken. Effective targeting to maximise conservation gain is important g...

Capsule: Population changes of many moorland and heathland birds in southwest England show associations with environmental change, and the area supports notable breeding populations of species of conservation concern. Aims: To quantify changes in moorland and heathland breeding bird abundance in relation to changes in environmental variables. Metho...

Capsule: There were up to 6348 Ring Ouzel territories in the UK in 2012.Aims: To produce estimates of the size of the Ring Ouzel breeding population in the UK and its constituent countries.Methods: A stratified random selection of tetrads was surveyed within the known breeding range, except for the remaining breeding areas on Dartmoor and historica...

Capsule The number of Dotterel breeding in the UK declined by 57% between 1987/88 and 2011, from 980 to 423 breeding males; there has been a contraction of the species’ geographical range as well as declining numbers on core sites. Aims To estimate the number of Dotterel breeding in the UK in 2011, the changes since surveys in 1987–88 and 1999, an...

Capsule At both landscape and local scales, breeding persistence in a declining Hawfinch population was greatest where broadleaved woodland cover was high, while at a fine scale, nest sites were associated with openings in the woodland canopy. Aims To assess which components of habitat are associated with Hawfinch occupancy at landscape (10-km), l...

Whilst there is good evidence for negative impacts of introduced rat species on island ecosystems, the effects of house mice (Mus musculus) are generally less well documented. In some situations, introduced house mice can exert severe impacts, particularly where this is the only introduced mammal. Here, we examine the distribution, relative abundan...

Major changes in the management of English farmland have occurred during the last decade including the introduction of the Environmental Stewardship (ES) Scheme (from 2005) and the loss of set-aside fallows (from 2007). We mapped habitat composition and the breeding distributions of cirl buntings, yellowhammers, skylarks and song thrushes across 56...

The Common Crane Grus grus was a familiar part of the UK avifauna up until the sixteenth century, although there is more evidence of a regular wintering population than widespread breeding. The species became extinct, probably through overexploitation, with the last evidence of breeding in England in 1542. Cranes subsequently became rare in the UK,...

Assessment of population size and annual breeding performance are key aspects of breeding wader research. There is however, often a trade-off between collecting highly reliable estimates of nest and chick survival at a small number of sites or less intensive monitoring of a larger number of sites giving less reliable estimates, but capturing more i...

A survey of breeding Cirl Buntings Emberiza cirlus in the United Kingdom in 2009 recorded an estimated 862 territories (95% confidence limits 785–975), in 136 occupied tetrads. These were confined largely to south Devon, but a small population now exists in Cornwall as a result of an ongoing reintroduction project. From the lows of the 1980s, the U...

The Ring Ouzel Turdus torquatus is a Red-listed, UK Biodiversity Action Plan priority species in Britain because of steep declines in breeding numbers over the past 25 years. Data from several monitoring projects, from across much of the species' British range, show that widespread declines continue. Recent studies aimed at understanding these decl...

Survey of Ascension Frigatebird 2009

Capsule Field methods used by the UK's Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) provide a practical approach to estimating breeding bird abundance and this paper discusses how they might be adapted to increase accuracy.Aims Using Salisbury Plain as a case study, examine the use of distance sampling to produce estimates of breeding bird abundance.Methods During 2...

Exmoor Moorland Breeding Bird Survey

Breeding Bird Survey of Dartmoor Training Area

Breeding Bird Survey of Salisbury Plain Training Area 2005

A farmland bird survey was commissioned by the RSPB in 2000, to help redress this issue. Among the aims was to determine changes in distribution since the 1988-91 Breeding Bird Atlas (Gibbons et al. 1993) and assess habitat associations of five species, skylark, tree sparrow, linnet, reed bunting and yellowhammer.

The 2000 breeding wader survey covered 38 sites within three of the key wader areas, Lough Neagh/Beg, Upper and Lower Lough Erne. The method of fieldwork and analysis generally followed those described in O’Brien and Smith (1992), with the exception of curlew which utilised Grant et al. (2000). Data from past surveys were re-examined for standardis...

Breeding Bird Survey of Salisbury Plain Training Area