My apps that visualise trends in the BTO annual ringing and NRS reports have been updated to include the 2024 data, which was released yesterday.

Change over time plots: stephenvickers.shinyapps.io/ringing_tota...
Spatial trends maps (ringing only): stephenvickers.shinyapps.io/ringing_map/

The Whoopers are starting to move and will soon be back on their Icelandic breeding grounds! Since @waterbirdcm.bsky.social started ringing Whooper Swans in 2023, we've tagged >600 inds. and gathered >750 sightings. Please keep an eye out and continue to report any sightings to us as they leave!

Flocking was associated with significantly larger non-breeding range COA shift rates, particularly in mixed-age flocks. However, flocking had no significant effect on breeding range COA shifts.

8/10

The data goes into PGLS models weighted by uncertainty in COA shift rate.
One model for each season for a binary flocking var. for 122 species. Another model for each season where we categorise flocks as either age-separated or mixed-age, for 81 species.

7/10

We collated information on migratory flocking behaviour of North American migratory birds, building upon the Beauchamp et al. 2011 dataset with species accounts from Birds of the World Online and age-cohort timing calculated from USGS banding data.

5/10

We hypothesised in species that migrate solo, inter-generational change may need change in genetics of migration distance/direction.
However, flocking migrants can benefit from social learning, which might act faster – but inter-generational learning can only happen in mixed-age flocks!

3/10

The BTO Ringing and NRS report 2023 data has now been added to my visualisation apps:

Explore graphs of numbers ringed etc. and NRS records over time:
stephenvickers.shinyapps.io/ringing_tota...

Explore a map of numbers ringed, etc. by region:
stephenvickers.shinyapps.io/ringing_map/

Between periods 1 (Oct ’21-Feb’22) and 3 (Aug ’22-Jan ‘23) we also found expansion of species groups associated with outbreaks. Landbirds and seabirds became more strongly associated with outbreaks, reflecting expansion in wild species impacted by HPAI.
6/8

Narrower species groups show our method picks up associations in groups we already thought were important, like wildfowl (ducks, geese, etc.), amongst some change across periods, like non-native gamebirds post-release. Unfortunately, not many seabird species could be tested.
5/8

But focussing on single-species is risky because patterns may match by chance when testing so many, so we look at consistency across groups of species.
Period 2 is ~spring/summer ’22 (not many poultry outbreaks), 1 & 3 are the autumn/winters either side (lots of outbreaks).
4/8

This gives us lots of species- and period-specific associations with HPAI outbreaks, most of which were positive (only positives shown here)
3/8

Using #eBird generated abundance distributions for 152 wild bird species, we can look at maps of each species’ abundance, together with farm density, poultry numbers, and where the outbreaks were, to find species abundance patterns that best match poultry outbreaks.
2/8