Bird responses to housing development in intensively managed agricultural landscapes

Like in many countries, Britain faces the challenge of housing a growing population, but urban expansion to address this can lead to locally high rates of biodiversity loss, along with fragmentatio

The environmental predictors of spatio-temporal variation in the breeding phenology of a passerine bird

Warmer springs have seen many of our birds breeding earlier, but scientists still do not know how they actually decide when to start building nests and laying eggs.

Quantifying nutrient inputs by gulls to a fluctuating lake, aided by movement ecology methods

Increasing crop heterogeneity enhances multitrophic diversity across agricultural regions

Avian malaria-mediated population decline of a widespread iconic bird species

Avian malaria linked to decline in London's House Sparrows

The once ubiquitous House Sparrow is now absent from many urban areas. New research suggests that malarial parasites may be involved in this decline.

Breeding bird assemblages supported by developing upland shrub woodland are influenced by micro-climate and habitat structure

Agri-environment effects on birds in Wales: Tir Gofal benefited woodland and hedgerow species

Associations between gamebird releases and general predators

Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges for commercial shoots may be boosting numbers of the avian predators and scavengers.

Using the first European Breeding Bird Atlas for science and perspectives for the new Atlas

Variation in ectoparasitic sheep tick Ixodes ricinus infestation on European Golden Plover chicks Pluvialis apricaria and implications for growth and survival

Using GIS-linked Bayesian Belief Networks as a tool for modelling urban biodiversity

This research demonstrates the feasibility of using a GIS-coupled Bayesian Belief Network approach to model biodiversity at fine spatial scales in complex landscapes.

How can assemblage structure indices improve monitoring of change in bird communities using ongoing survey data?

The composition of British bird communities is associated with long-term garden bird feeding

Is bird feeding changing Britain's garden bird communities?

Newly published research from BTO shows how the popular pastime of feeding the birds is significantly shaping garden bird communities in Britain.

Accounting for automated identification errors in acoustic surveys

Breeding and wintering bird distributions in Britain and Ireland from citizen science bird atlases

Open access atlases

BTO has been working with volunteer-sourced atlas data for many decades. Now we are taking the bold step of making the full archive of distribution data freely available for anyone to use.

Incorporating fine-scale environmental heterogeneity into broad-extent models

Estimates of waterbird numbers wintering in Ireland, 2011/12–2015/16

Bird conservation and the land sharing‐sparing continuum in farmland‐dominated landscapes of lowland England

Spare or share to benefit biodiversity?

Agriculture is necessary to meet the food demands of an increasing human population, but it is also a leading threat to biodiversity, both because natural habitats are destroyed when land is converted to agricultural use and because the intensive management of existing agricultural land has negative consequences for many species. For this reason, scientists are studying strategies to mitigate the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity.

Hybrid expert ensembles for identifying unreliable data in citizen science

Correlates of alternative migratory strategies in western bluebirds