Winter Atlas kicks off again - summary of last winters recording effort

We now have the Pembrokeshire data for the first winter season of the new BTO atlas. There are almost 15,000 records for Pembrokeshire - a huge effort and many thanks to those who have contributed.

The map below gives an indication of the number of species recorded so far in winter in each tetrad.

Green patches - no records yet.

Grey squares have less than seven species recorded and probably mostly represent birds recorded while someone is driving through a square.

The darker red the squares are, the higher the number of species recorded. Darkest red squares have between 35 and 70 species - based on "timed-tetrad" visits, and people recording in the tetrads where they live or visit most often.

So far we have records from 358 tetrads and of 152 species. A minimum of 225,573 individual birds were recorded (where no count was entered, the number is assumed to be one - so really there were lots more). At least 59 people contributed - not all from Pembrokeshire, and indeed one person has an address in Finland! Soon we will be sending last winters records to Jon Green and Steve Berry for the local archive.

Lots more effort is needed this winter, especially in the middle and north-east of the county, so please do contribute in the coming season - fieldwork for the second winter period started again on November 1st.

So, have you logged yet those recent records of brent geese, whooper swans (none were recorded last winter!) black redstarts, bramblings etc? You can do this easily on-line directly to the Atlas or if you enter them via BirdTrack they will also go automatically into the Atlas.

A couple of 1st Nov records we will be adding include a nice female goshawk coming into roost nr Martletwy; a red kite on Castlemartin peninsula plus black redstarts and firecrests at Stackpole.