** 2023 UPDATES **

Changes to Panel membership

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.

Our latest report has been published in the November issue of British Birds. The report documents the status of the 111 species and subspecies of rare and scarce native birds that were recorded breeding, or showing signs of breeding, in the UK in 2021; this is by far the 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 12 rare non-native breeding species.

Headlines include the first RBBP records of Marsh Sandpiper, Elegant Tern and Dusky Warbler, increasing numbers in a range of waterbirds and four raptor species and the surprising return of Temminck’s Stint, but the continuing absence of Montagu’s Harrier and Yellow-legged Gull as breeding species.  In our 50th anniversary year, the report also takes a backwards look at change in bird populations over the five decades since the Rare Breeding Birds Panel was formed. A summary of the report can be found here, and a table of summary statistics is here.

The RBBP’s 2020 report is now available open access on our website here (along with all RBBP reports dating back to our first, for 1973). Our most recent report, for 2021, was published in the November 2023 issue of British Birds and will be made available on this website in early autumn 2024.

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.

Thanks to British Birds for publishing this paper and allowing us to share; the British Wildlife paper will also be available in due course.

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. Decreasing species include Monk Parakeet and Ruddy Duck, due to control programmes, and Golden Pheasant; the last Lady Amherst’s Pheasant from the once well-established Bedfordshire population disappeared in 2016. 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.

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 Sandpipers and Serin (see blogs on these here).

** 2022 UPDATES **

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.  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.

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. 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.

The RBBP’s 2019 report is now available open access on our website here (along with all RBBP reports dating back to our first, for 1973). Our next report, for 2020, will be published in the November issue of British Birds.

** 2021 UPDATES **