Our Ornithology team has been lucky to acquire an early release of “Seabirds Count”, the fourth census of the British Isle’s important breeding seabird populations and wish to remark on the hard work needed and how important this census is to ornithological reports assessing potential impacts on important seabird colonies around the country. Data was collected for over 10,000 sites and more than 5,500 urban 1 km quadrats across Britain and Ireland between 2015 and 2021, providing more than 40,000 records collected by over 1,00 surveyors through the online Seabird Monitoring Programme (SMP) database and online urban gull data forms. Over the past two years, the Seabirds Count Editorial Board with 30 species specialists and 26 reviewers have worked hard to compile the results of this enormous effort to create such a remarkable resource.
The book includes regularly breeding species, divided into their own dedicated chapters, providing overviews on species population estimates, and trends at different geographical scales along with distribution maps and specific counts and comments for each relevant SPA. Interpretation from species authors contributes to the results, taking into account recent research to help explain reasons for population and distributional changes. A separate chapter discussing the rare breeding seabird species found in Britain and Ireland is also included.
This book brings together a library of results, research and specialist understanding providing a vital reference for our ornithological assessment as well as some insight on how successful previous conservation practices have been. This will prove increasingly useful as more energy projects move offshore and MKO strive to stay up to date with the most recent facts and figures available.