Hi guys
My dad and I have been discussing putting together a British list based on how common birds are - ie. try and prioritise which common birds we haven't seen yet.
The RSPB website categorises birds Red, Amber and Green based on the change in breeding populations over time. However the problem with that is that it doesn't take into account the starting quantity - for example Starlings are on the Red list because of the decline over the last 25 years, but there are still millions of them.
My question is, does anyone have some sort of list breaking birds down by approx quantity ?
Any help or thoughts would be greats
Mal Skelton
Mal,
The book "State of the Nations' Birds" by Chris Mead ranks UK breeding species along the lines of How likely are you to record it?
In addition to this it has a wealth of summarised data from the last European and Britain & Ireland breeding surveys.
Also if i remember rightly John Gooders and other more recently have written where to find books rating the likelihood of seeing species as well.
Of course any ranked list depends on where you live and how far you are willing to travel!
I tried to do this many years ago and found it wasn't quite as easy as it sounds. Unfortunately I haven't kept the details or I'd have let you have a copy. Your best bet is to get hold of the Poyser atlases of breeding birds and wintering birds, which have population estimates. They're a bit out of date now, but would be sufficient for your purposes. The problem then is working the passage migrants into the list. Not so easy when numbers can vary from year to year.
The easiest solution is to try to get hold of a copy of the now-out-of-print Shell Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland. That has broad seasonal abundance codes for all the British regulars (ie whether numbers are 1-10, 11-100, 101-1,000, 1,001-10,000, etc)