BirdFacts
Welcome to the BTO's BirdFacts pages. It is hoped they will provide, in one place, information to answer most questions that might arise concerning Britain's birds. The pages provide information on all species which have officially occurred in a wild state in Britain and Ireland, along with a few species that escape regularly from bird collections (so might be seen). Where possible, the accounts derive from information from BTO surveys and links are given to the relevant survey pages for each species. Full accounts are provide for the 258 commonest species, i.e. those which breed in Britian, or occur regularly in winter or on passage. Shorter accounts are provided for the remaining species, which are mostly rare visitors to Britain, or only encountered as escapes from bird collections.
Use the "Find a Species" drop down menu at the top of the page to select a species from the lists arranged in either alphabetical or taxonomic order. The shorter lists of common species contain only those species with full accounts. To find out more about any piece of information, click on adjacent help button, which should bring up a pop-up window with more details. All the text in these help windows can also be reached through the 'About' option on the top menu-bar.
If you spot any errors, missing information, or have a picture we could use for a species that does not have one already, please email us:
Where appropriate, references are provided to the original data sources either directly on the species pages, or in the associated help page (when the same source is used for most species). Information from these pages should be cited as:
Robinson, R.A. (2005) BirdFacts: profiles of birds occurring in Britain & Ireland (v1.1, Jan 2006). BTO Research Report 407, BTO, Thetford (http://www.bto.org/birdfacts).
This citation is repeated at the foot of each page.
Thanks are due to Iain Downie and Susan Waghorn for helping put the webpages together, to all those who provided helpful comments on earler versions and to Raymond O'Connor who started gathering these data some years ago and whose efforts provided the seed for these pages.
These pages are dedicated to the memory of Chris Mead, who knew an answer to almost any question you cared to ask about Britain's birds.
