BTO initiative calls on shooting community's help

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Tuesday, 27 May 2008

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is calling for gameshooters and wildfowlers to help with a new online recording scheme called BirdTrack.

The initiative, developed through a partnership between the BTO, RSPB and BirdWatch Ireland, is a year–round recording programme that uses data from birdwatchers’ records to support species and site conservation at local, national and international scales.

Results produced by BirdTrack will include mapping the migration and movements of birds and the monitoring of scarce birds in Britain and Ireland, which follows on from the successful Migration Watch project that looked at spring migration in 2002 to 2004.

For many species of waterfowl and waders, shooters are in an ideal position to record movements of these often under-recorded species. Mark Grantham, organiser of the BirdTrack survey, told Shooting Times: “Though we are primarily interested in complete lists of birds seen, one-off casual records and incomplete lists are still of great use and, with other surveys, help us to create an accurate picture of our birds today. Readers’ species records from evening flights of waterfowl or counts of woodcock and snipe during the winter are of real value, and we can make sure they are used directly for conservation.”

To register, visit www.bto.org/birdtrack/ and click on Register for BirdTrack.

The rest of this article appears in 29 May issue of Shooting Times.