English Farm Woodland Bird Survey

Volunteers collected data from farmland woods in 2019, to assess how well birds have colonised recently planted areas.

Since 1988, over 22,000 farm woods have been planted in England. The woods are mostly small, between 1 and 5 hectares in size, which made survey coverage quite quick and straightforward. These farm woods were planted in a wide variety of settings, ranging from complete isolation to alongside existing established woodland. This provided a very interesting natural experiment to assess how well birds have colonised these new woodlands on farmland.

What was required?

Surveyors needed to be able to identify birds by sight and sound, and ideally have had experience with other BTO surveys or bird territory mapping.

This survey covered many of the 46 farm woodland sites previously surveyed in 1999, as well as up to 2000 other farm woods, which hadn’t been surveyed at all.

The sites were small, so it was possible to cover a number of woodland plots on a farm in a morning; each plot took around 20 to 30 minutes to survey, depending on size.

Four morning visits were required between mid March 2019 and 15 July 2019, to record all birds in and around the farm wood plot. Registrations were recorded on site maps, using standard BTO species and activity codes, mainly to accurately plot all individuals and help avoid double counting. A summary of the number of territories detected was then determined from each survey visit.

Some basic, but essential, habitat recording was required for farm woods, to record the features such as tree species, boundary type and mammal activity.

Further information

Please see the resources page for details of field methods, recording forms and other useful survey information.

You can contact the survey organiser Greg Conway via farmwoodbirds@bto.org.