Environmental Records Centre
for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly

Cornwall Bird Atlas

For many years there has been no way of bringing together the diverse records relating to many of the breeding and non-breeding bird species. Randomly collected records of common breeding and wintering species have been a particular cause for concern and there has been much discussion about the best way to handle such records.

The Cornwall Bird Atlas project hopes not only to provide a home for such records, but also to put in place a recording structure that will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the avifauna of Cornwall. This project will take all species records at any time of year and use them constructively, but the primary aim is to concentrate on the production of two atlases:

		a breeding atlas; and
		a wintering atlas.

We hope that the atlas(es) will provide a clear picture of the status of all the birds using Cornwall at the start of the 21st century so that all the organisations in the county working for the conservation of birds will have a firm basis on which to draw conclusions.

While many other counties have produced tetrad (2km x 2km) atlases of their breeding birds and some have also produced winter atlases, there is nothing of that sort for Cornwall. The best that we have is the 10km x 10km atlases produced at a national level. The topography and habitat variations across the county mean that current atlases provide only a crude indication of the population and distribution of any species.

There are about 1050 tetrads in Cornwall. It is the intention to survey all of them at some level, not only to produce distribution maps, but also to provide an estimate of the population.

Overseen by the Cornwall Bird-Watching and Preservation Society, this project shows how ERCCIS works together with local recording groups. Acting as the secretariat to the project, the Records Centre reduces costs and helps to streamline the operation.

Newsletters

There are two newsletters each year, which summarise the progress for each part of the year. Within the newsletters are maps that show the latest results for certain species.

The maps have been produced using DMAP from tetrad records that have been classified in three ways:

a) the total count in a one hour transect (coloured red);

b) the maximum count at any one time in a tetrad that has had a one hour transect, but where the species was not recorded in that hour (coloured pink); and

c) the maximum count at any one time in a tetrad that has not received a one hour transect (coloured blue).

The counts have been scaled in proportion to the counts gained in (a) or to the maximum count in (b) and (c).

Download newsletters

Please contact us at the Records Centre if you wish to get involved!

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