West Midland Bird Club

Birmingham and The Black Country Breeding Bird Survey

How can you help?

Many people feed birds in their gardens, attracting species like Blue Tit, Blackbird, Robin, Chaffinch and House Sparrow. Some of these may stay to breed around the houses and gardens. Other birds will breed in local parks, along canals or rivers, or in fields or hedgerows.

You can help this survey by forwarding details of such breeding birds, but please obtain permission if the site is private. Please enter the details on the recording sheet, which is available as a Microsoft Word 97 document (21 Kb), or a "Rich Text" file (7 Kb), compatible with most other word processors.

If you wish, you can carry out a more detailed survey of a particular area. If so, please send for a survey form, indicating which area you would like to cover.

Instructions

The survey covers the period 1st April and 31st July, although breeding records (see below) from other months may be included.

Name, address and telephone number

Please enter these in case we need to contact you for further information.

Year

The year in which your records occurred: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 or 2002. If you wish to include any records from previous years, please forward them on an attached sheet.

10km square and Tetrad letter

Birmingham and the Black Country cover parts of fifteen 10km squares. Please enter the appropriate four-figure reference for the 10kn square and tetrad letter.

If you are unable to identify the squares for any of your records, please enter an 'A to Z' reference or as many details as possible to enable us to identify the site accurately.

Species

Please enter the species' common name. If you have records for one species in different tetrads, please enter them on separate lines. If the tetrad straddles the boundary of Birmingham and the Black Country, please include only records from within the Birmingham and the Black Country part of the tetrad.

Breeding Category

For each tetrad, we need to know whether the species was just Seen in the square, or whether it was Breeding.

The definitions of Seen and Breeding are:

Seen

A species that is seen using the tetrad, but with no evidence of breeding. This includes:

Birds singing, holding territory or displaying on one date only;
Birds present in suitable breeding habitat, but with no other evidence of breeding;
Birds making use of the area for any purpose other than simply flying over, e.g. Swallows taking insects in the air or Kestrels hovering.

Obvious migrants, late winter visitors, gulls flying over and birds not in a typical breeding habitat for the species are not included.

Breeding

One or more of the following indicates that the species was probably or definitely breeding.

Singing birds holding territory on more than one date at least ten days apart, or counter-singing males;
Other evidence of territorial behaviour;
Courtship and display;
Anxiety call/agitated behaviour of adults suggesting presence of young or nest close by;
Brood-patch on trapped bird(s);
Nest building (including excavating nest-hole);
Distraction display or injury-feigning;
Used nest found;
Adult(s) carrying food or faecal sac;
Adult(s) entering or leaving nest-site in circumstances indicating occupied nest (including colonies);
Nest and eggs found, or bird sitting and not disturbed, or eggshells found near nest;
Nest with young or downy young of ducks, game birds, waders, etc.

Contact

Please return forms, or address any queries, to:

Kevin Clements
26 Hambrook Close, Dunstall Park, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, WV6 0XA
Tel. (01902) 568997.