The 2020 report of the Rare Breeding Birds Panel was published in British Birds in November 2022 (Eaton et al. 2022) and can be obtained by subscription at www.britishbirds.co.uk; a pdf of the report will be available at www.rbbp.org.uk in due course.

The report documents the status of the 101 species and subspecies of rare and scarce native birds that were recorded breeding, or showing signs of breeding, in the UK in 2020; this is the highest number reported upon by the RBBP in any annual report. 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. A table summarising species’ totals and trends can be found here. In addition, records were compiled for 12 rare non-native breeding species.

The recording of rare breeding birds in 2020 was heavily impacted by the Covid lockdown restrictions which were imposed across the UK from March and continued until at least the end of May. Birdwatchers were not able to visit sites as normal; conservation, research and monitoring projects were reduced or cancelled; and the management and monitoring of many reserves was curtailed. As a result, the reporting of many species was affected. We assessed the impact by looking at the data received and how it varied from recent years, and by asking county bird recorders, our key data providers, to complete an online questionnaire on the impact of lockdown restrictions on the data available to them.

The total number of pairs of rare breeding birds reported in 2020 was 14.3% lower than the average for 2015-19, but this varied widely between species. At a species level, we assessed that reporting of 44 of 75 (59%) regularly reported species had been adversely affected by lockdown restrictions to at least a moderate extent. The species for which this impact was the greatest were species mostly or entirely restricted to Scotland within the UK.

With lockdown restrictions affecting the reporting of more than half of the rare breeding species on which we report annually, we must be careful on how we report on the status of rare breeding birds in 2020, and use 2020 data in future assessments. For those species for which we believe reporting to have been adversely impacted we have not used 2020 data to update population estimates and trends but have instead reused those from our report for 2019.

Nevertheless, our 2020 report still contains a huge amount of data derived from a massive effort, mostly by volunteer birdwatchers and reliant on the dedication of county bird recorders and other data providers to collate and submit data to us. We received almost 7,000 unique records, the great majority precisely georeferenced to be of the maximum value for supporting conservation efforts.

Of the 101 native taxa reported, 68 were confirmed as breeding in 2020, and a further nine were likely to have bred but such evidence was not reported (mainly due to reduced fieldwork, as discussed above). The remaining 24 species included a scatter of the sorts of oddities that all RBBP reports contain, individuals showing breeding behaviour well outside of their normal breeding ranges, such as a Black Tern of the American race surinamensis, Little Crake, Citrine Wagtail and Asian Desert Warbler. Two other rarely reported species feature in a more meaningful way: Zitting Cisticola bred in the Channel Islands in 2020, and two pairs of White Stork bred successfully in Sussex as a result of the reintroduction project there.

White-tailed Eagle; Ian Francis

While the reduced monitoring effort in 2020 means we must be circumspect about identifying those species that had a poor year, we can be confident that those with higher than usual numbers must have had a good year! Indeed, 12 species had higher numbers than ever reported previously. Most of these have been undergoing steady increases over recent years e.g., Eurasian Bittern, Common Crane, European Spoonbill, Great White and Cattle Egret, and White-tailed Eagle. The same is not true of Honey-buzzard, for which the record total was the result of a national survey, although the survey did confirm that the species has shown a substantial increase since the previous survey two decades ago.

Other species flourishing in 2020 included Marsh Warbler, with the highest total since 1997, and Savi’s Warbler which had its best year since 1992. Both Red-backed Shrike and Fieldfare were confirmed as breeding, continuing to stave off extinction in the UK, and a pair of Wrynecks were reported prospecting in Ceredigion, raising the hope that they might one day return as a breeding bird.

On the downside, sufficient attention is paid to the UK’s dwindling population of Montagu’s Harriers, and their monitoring was unimpeded by lockdown restrictions, so we can be confident that after years of dwindling numbers the species did not breed in the UK in 2020. This is the first absence since 1975. Montagu’s Harrier was moved to the Red list in last year’s Birds of Conservation Concern 5 assessment, and while the presence of five males of breeding age at a site in the south of England, and a female at a previous breeding site in Yorkshire give some hope that breeding may occur in the future, it is clear that the fate of the population currently rests of the survival and breeding success of just a few individual birds.

Dr Mark Eaton

Secretary, Rare Breeding Birds Panel, 1^st November 2022.