Could you manage to do four visits of 1-2 hours to the same small area in a year?  If so, you could be invaluable to the forthcoming atlas project.

As some of you are already aware, the next five years is 20 years since the last national breeding atlas of birds survey period.  At that time, we also carried out a full breeding survey in “Old Cambs” – the bits not in Huntingdonshire or the Soke of Peterborough (the Huntingdonshire area was surveyed a couple of years later).

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is repeating its atlas project, and as a club we have decided to repeat the full county survey, now covering the whole of the modern county, with the co-operation of the Peterborough Bird Club in their area.

The BTO is combining breeding survey work with winter survey work in the same period, starting this coming winter, with the aim of covering eight tetrads (2x2km squares) in each 10km square in the British Isles both in winter and summer.

As a Club, we are aiming to get more comprehensive coverage than this, leading to a publication at the end of the survey period showing breeding and winter distributions across the county.

So, what will you need to do?   Each tetrad has to be visited twice in summer and twice in winter, once during the survey period.  Each visit should be 1-2 hours, so that’s actually only 4-8 hours in the field, probably a lot less than many of you spend on your local patch or visits to sites in the county. You will have to record all species of bird seen or heard, using specific survey sheets.[is this correct?]

We also need several volunteers to take on the role of co-ordinating a group of volunteers in a 10km square (or more than one), to ensure sensible coverage.

As part of this, we will be having an indoor meeting in the autumn (probably 10th October 2007) to go through methods and hints and tips on how to progress, and also to put volunteers for the same square in touch with each other.

We will also be having a visit from the BTO atlas co-ordinator, Dawn Balmer at the Club’s January indoor meeting.

We also hope to have a field session in the spring for those who feel they need a bit of training, although it really is as simple as going out birding for the morning!

If you would like to volunteer, take a look at the map, and let us know which  geographical area you are interested in helping with.  

The area in the Northwest, outlined in grey, is the Peterborough Bird Club area and they will be responsible for co-ordinating the coverage in these 10km squares; so if you volunteer for one of those, we will be putting you in the capable hands of our colleagues in Peterborough.

Email or write to the Research Committee at cambsbirdatlas@btinternet.com
or by post to 236 Wimpole Road, Barton, Cambridge CB23 7AE.