Early findings

Revised text of a John Woodland report of April 2008

The submission of Atlas records on-line allows the BTO very quickly to build a picture of the distributions of birds. The orange dots on the maps below are based entirely on records submitted to the website as Roving Records and Timed Tetrad Visits and show presence in a 10-km square. However, these maps do not show the complete picture; it will take four years to do that!

Little Egret

In the Winter Atlas (1981-84) just one Little Egret was recorded from Orkney (HY44) of all places! Over 25 years later and the winter distribution is very different. So far, Little Egrets have been recorded mostly in southern England in a line from the Humber to the Severn, Wales and coastal north-west England. There are a few records from Scotland and in Ireland records are mainly from the east and south coasts. It will be fascinating to see how the distribution changes for the breeding season.

Figure 1. The distribution of Little Egret in 10-km square based on online submissions by mid-January.

Nuthatch

The distribution of Nuthatch in the Winter Atlas (1981-84) is shown by the black dots and additional records from the first two and a half months of fieldwork for Bird Atlas 2007-11 are shown in orange. The increase in northern England and southern Scotland is impressive. The recently published Birds of Scotland indicates that Nuthatches have been appearing more widely across Scotland since 2000. As an example, there were two pairs in the Borders in 1989 and by 2004 the population had grown to 220 pairs. It will be exciting to document the changes in range over the next four years keep those records coming!

Figure 2. The distribution of Nuthatch from the Winter Atlas (1981-84) (black dots) and additional records from the Bird Atlas 2007-11 (orange dots) based on online submissions by mid-January.

Buzzard

The black dots show the distribution of Buzzard from the Winter Atlas (1981-84) with the bulk of the population in the west of England, Wales and Scotland and just a few records in Northern Ireland. Scattered black dots along the east coast may refer to birds of continental origin or shifts during cold-weather movements. The additional orange dots are records in 10-km squares from Bird Atlas 2007-11. There has been a real shift eastwards with much of East Anglia, south-east England, north-east England and south-east Scotland now occupied. Given the relatively poor coverage in Ireland to date, we might expect greater range expansion here too.

Figure 3. The distribution of Buzzard from the Winter Atlas (1981-84) (black dots) and additional records from the Bird Atlas 2007-11 (orange dots) based on online submissions by mid-January.