How to contribute records to RBBP

Birdwatchers should submit ALL their bird records to the local county/regional recorder. A list of county recorders with contact details can be found here.

Every recorder has their preferred mechanism for receipt of bird records, but many now prefer records to be entered on BirdTrack. BirdTrack is an online citizen science website, operated by the British Trust for Ornithology on behalf of a partnership of the BTO, the RSPB, BirdWatch Ireland, the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club and the Welsh Ornithological Society. You can find a link to BirdTrack here.

If your records include breeding or potential breeding records of rare breeding birds, these will be extracted by the local bird recorder and submitted annually to the RBBP. Here are some of the important reasons to submit your records of rare breeding birds:

• Your records are included in the overall UK population statistics for each species, providing added value and context to the records collected locally.

• Each submission complements all the others and allows the RBBP to build up annual totals of all the 90-100 rare species which breed in the UK each year.
  Definitive records of breeding of those rarer species which breed only occasionally is recorded for posterity, helping, for example, research and compilers of avifaunas.

• All records are archived safely and separately as part of the UK’s ornithological archive, so that details are not lost in the future.

• The annual statistics are incredibly important to conservation and to science, and are most useful if they cover a consistent and large proportion of the UK’s
  population of each species. RBBP statistics contribute to Government wild bird indicators and other international obligations, reviews of the UK’s Special Protection Area network, Birds of Conservation Concern assessments and the annual State of the UK’s Birds report. Recent research uses have included species studies, informing national survey design and studies on the importance of protected area networks and the impact of climate change. For many of these uses however, accurate locational information is critical; otherwise is it not possible to match records to protected areas or other locations.

• Publication of the report provides feedback to the birding community.

In addition, submission of data to RBBP by county recorders fully serves observer’s expectations that their data is going forward into national population statistics for rare and scarce breeding species. We also recommend that all annual county bird reports make reference to the RBBP stating that appropriate records are shared with RBBP for all the reasons listed above.