BTO: Surveys and membership etc

[Picidae]

Any information regarding the British Trust for Ornithology's survey work and for membership etc can be found by linking from the home page of the Trust

British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) home page - Researching Britain's Birds

Details of Atlas surveys, Breeding Bird Surveys and Garden BirdWatch can be found online here as well as all your local contacts who organise your area's volunteer coordinators and ringing coordinators.

[Dogghound]

I do these surveys they are great fun I advise anyone interested in birds to give them a go.

[pliers]

I do 2 tetrads for Birdtrack, i find this works well for my style of birding.

[SheffieldLass]

I first signed up for the Garden Bird Watch, then quickly moved on to doing other surveys. Great fun. I did the Scarce Woodland Bird Survey when that one was around and got a cd of woodland bird calls with that one ... very useful. So there can be the added bonus of a perk with some surveys

I've been doing various Bird Atlas tetrads, but have been snookered this winter by the weather. I've 5 to do, but the heavy rain or fog and then heavy snow meant I couldn't get to do any of the early Winter ones, as you are not supposed to do them in adverse weather, and I'd left them until early December, which in past years has been ok ....but not this winter . I discovered with snow underfoot that you spend far too much of the time looking to see where your feet are going than looking around, that it is not good for picking up the birds anyway, so no good for doing the timed surveys. I decided instead to do some casual lists during the adverse weather instead to feed in to the Atlas via Birdtrack.

Anyone else had this problem? I'm going to do the late winter timed records anyway, and will have to pick up the early winter ones next year, maybe repeat the late season ones then.