Grant of £1,000 from the TVERC Recorders’ Fund. Total project cost £4,000
Up until now very little was known about the birdlife of the River Thame catchment. To remedy this, River Thame Conservation Trust (RTCT) undertook a volunteer-led, catchment-wide bird survey to create the River Thame Bird Atlas 2016-2020.
A team of 63 volunteers carried out winter and summer bird surveys across 236 different survey areas covering the whole of the river catchment (over 675 km²). The group of skilled and passionate volunteers carried out 935 survey visits, walked for c. 3,785 hours and found an impressive 153 species in the catchment. The TOE grant contributed towards the costs of digitising the data collected by the volunteers.
Some really exciting and rare birds such as Hawfinch and Merlin were recorded and it has also proven breeding of less common birds such as Goosander and Curlew as well as charted the distribution of our more common breeding species such as Blackcap, Whitethroat and Chiffchaff.
The project was delivered in partnership with the British Trust for Ornithology which has allowed the comparison of records from the national Bird Atlas 2007-11 and helped map changes in populations over 10 years including the increased range of species such as Little Egret and Raven.
RTCT is very proud of its new online Atlas, the only one of its kind across a river catchment in the UK. Click River Thame Conservation Trust bird atlas to explore the Atlas.