The importance of Facilitator bird monitoring
See title in English.
One of a farmer cluster Facilitator’s roles is to coordinate the environmental monitoring within the cluster. This can be either carrying out the monitoring themselves or getting specialists or local volunteers to carry out these surveys. Farmland birds can be used as an indicator species group to help quantify the biodiversity within a cluster and monitor changes over time in response to environmental and habitat changes. They can be easy group to survey in the breeding season (April-June) due to the territorial and vocal nature of most species whilst they are breeding. The main survey methods are point counts or set length transects that are walked an hour after dawn, with a count of each species and any breeding behaviour recorded. The same points or transects should be repeated between years so that the data is comparable. It is preferable for the surveyor to be able to identify all bird species seen and heard, but if they don’t have the knowledge to do so then they should aim to be able to identify at least some of the key farmland bird indicator species. By building up a dataset of farmland bird numbers over a time period, responses of populations to the implementation of new habitat features, changes to farming practices, the installation of nest boxes etc. can be observed. This will provide feedback on the effectiveness of these measures and allow further changes to be targeted to benefitting specific species of interest.
See summary in English.
Farmer Clusters for Realising Agrobiodiversity Management across Ecosystems (FRAMEwork)
Ongoing | 2020-2025
- Main funding source
- Horizon 2020 (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
- Geographical location
- United Kingdom