The Rare Breeding Birds Panel

Rare Breeding Birds in the UK in 2022

Our latest report has been published in the November issue of British Birds. The report documents the status of the 108 species and subspecies of rare and scarce native birds that were recorded breeding, or showing signs of breeding, in the UK in 2022; this is the second-highest number of taxa reported on in a single year by the Rare Breeding Birds Panel. Population totals are given for each species in the report, alongside a breakdown in records by country and recording area, and where possible updated trends are given. In addition, records were compiled for 14 rare non-native breeding species.

Glossy Ibis bred in the UK for the first time, in Cambridgeshire, and popula­tion increase and range expansion were recorded in a range of species colonising from southern Europe, recovering raptors, and some northern waders. However, some other species are close to losing their place in our reports: only two male Montagu’s Harriers were recorded in 2022 and neither attracted a female; just three male Marsh Warblers were found; and no Fieldfares at all were reported in the 2022 breeding season. A summary of the report can be found here, and a table of summary statistics is here.

Non-native breeding birds in the UK, 2015-20

Our latest report on non-native breeding birds was published in British Birds at the beginning of September. Non-native breeding birds in the UK, 2015-20 documents the 22 rare breeding species (with fewer than 300 pairs) to have bred, or attempted to breed, in the UK over that six year period, as well as providing a summary on the status of the eight commoner non-native breeders.

The report shows that only one rare non-native species, Red-crested Pochard, is increasing while eight are decreasing. There are, however, two species reported for the first time, with Cackling Goose and Lanner Falcon breeding in hybrid pairs with Barnacle Goose and Peregrine Falcon respectively. A summary of the report can be found in the blog here.

UPDATE (Sept ’24): this report is now available to read and download here.

Changes to Panel membership

After an incredible 32 years of service on the Rare Breeding Birds Panel, David Stroud has stepped down (Dec 2023). David joined in 1991 as the representative of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, and was RBBP Chair between 2008 and 2012. Following David’s retirement from the JNCC in 2019, he kindly agreed to stay on the Panel as an independent member. His wisdom and experience in numerous aspects of ornithology and the use of data, such as that collected by the RBBP, for conservation purposes has been invaluable for over three decades. We wish him all the best in his ‘RBBP retirement’; we know that his conservation activities will continue for many years to come.

David has kindly shared a few observations from his time on the RBBP, on some of the changes he’s seen over the 32 years; you can read these on the blog here.

At the same time as bidding David farewell, we are delighted to welcome a new Panel member, Katy Westerberg. Katy has worked for the RSPB since 2019 (although joins the Panel as an independent member), and is currently in the Conservation Data Management Unit, working with the organisation’s species data and data flows with national recording schemes. She has experience in a wide range of fieldwork projects, with a particular enthusiasm for seabirds and the remote islands on which they live, although she currently finds herself on the mainland in Dumfries and Galloway. Katy becomes just the 26^th member of the RBBP in our 50 years of working.

Andrew King, Panel member since 2010, stepped down from the RBBP early in 2023 and we wish to thank him for his valuable contribution over this 13-year period. In particular, insights from his experience as county recorder for Breconshire, as well as his knowledge of the recording community in Wales and expertise on a range of rare breeding species were of great value to our work. The photo, left, shows Andrew receiving a painting of the Panel’s logo species, Black-necked Grebe, from our Chair Dawn Balmer as a token of our appreciation for his input and good company over the years.

Following Andrew’s departure, we are delighted to welcome a new member, Paul Castle, to the RBBP. Paul brings a wealth of experience to the Panel and enables us to maintain representation from the county bird recording network. He is Wiltshire Bird Recorder and managing editor of the Wiltshire bird report, and has served three terms as Chair of the Wiltshire Ornithological Society. He was a co-author/editor of Birds of Wiltshire (2007) and was one of the organisers of the Wiltshire Tetrad Atlases 1995–2000 and 2007–2012. He has a strong interest in raptors, and has been heavily involved in the study and conservation of Montagu’s Harriers in southern England.

Details of all the current members of the RBBP can be found here.

Recent RBBP papers

As part of our activities to mark the 50th anniversary of the RBBP’s formation as an independent body with the responsibility for monitoring the UK’s rarest breeding birds, the Panel has published two review papers in the journals British Birds and British Wildlife. These look back over the five decades since 1973 at how both the work of the Panel, and the populations of rare breeding bird species that we monitor, have changed, as well as summarising how we operate nowadays.

The paper in British Birds, The Rare Breeding Birds Panel: five decades of monitoring the UK’s rare breeding birds (Stroud et al. 2023) is now available open access, and can be read here (and the supplementary online material is here). It focusses on the development of the Panel’s work, describing how this has evolved in step with the technology that supports the collection, sharing and use of data. It stresses how the birdwatching community plays a crucial part in the ability of the organisation to run effectively, set against the background of major change in the numbers and distribution of our rarest nesting birds.

The paper in British Wildlife, Monitoring five decades of change in the UK’s rarest breeding birds through citizen science: the Rare Breeding Birds Panel, (Eaton et al. 2023) is now also available to read on our website here. The paper complements the British Birds paper by focusing more on the changes in bird populations as shown by RBBP data collected since 1973, as well as the value of this data for bird conservation and research.

Thanks to British Birds (www.britishbirds.co.uk) and British Wildlife (www.britishwildlife.com) for publishing these papers and allowing us to share them open access.

The RBBP at 50

As the RBBP began collating data and reporting on the status of the UK’s rare breeding birds in 1973, we are celebrating our 50th birthday in 2023. There will be a range of publications and website developments through the year to mark the occasion. We also hosted a free online conference on the evenings of 15th and 16th March, with 12 great presentations covering a wide range of topics related to the RBBP, the work we do, and the UK’s rare breeding birds. The event was much enjoyed by the 298 attendees. Huge thanks to our fantastic guest speakers! An account of the conference, with RECORDINGS OF ALL THE TALKS so you can catch up on anything you missed, or even rewatch your favourites, is now available.

In addition, we have published papers reviewing our first 50 years of monitoring rare breeding birds, and what it has shown us, in British Birds and British Wildlife – we will share them here in due course. In September we will publish our latest report on rare non-native breeding birds, covering the period 2015-20, and then our annual report on native rare breeding birds (in 2021) will be out in November. And Panel Archivist Mark Holling has published papers on the breeding of Great Grey Shrike, Spotted Sandpiper, Serin and Bee-eater (see blogs on these here).

UPDATE: our previous annual report, Rare Breeding Birds in the UK in 2021, published in British Birds in November 2023, is now freely available for download here. All previous reports, back to 1973, can be found here.