BASC are helping to improve the recording of bird sightings across the UK by collaborating with the Wales Ornithological Society to train volunteers to use the BirdTrack website.
Members of bird watching groups and the Welsh Ornithological Society (WOS) were invited to BASC’s Marford Mill head office to be trained by experts from WOS and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
BirdTrack is a joint project between the BTO, the RSPB, Birdwatch Ireland, the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club and the Welsh Ornithological Society that looks at migration movements and distributions of birds throughout Britain and Ireland.
The system allows those out birdwatching or watching birds in their garden to record sightings. The combined results held in BirdTrack can then provide useful data on migration patterns and tracking scarce species.
Ian Danby, BASC’s head of biodiversity projects said: “As a BTO volunteer in my spare time, I was delighted to offer Marford Mill as a training venue.
“A lot of BASC members record wildlife, either for a conservation organisation like the BTO or through BASC’s bespoke Green Shoots Mapping system. But there is always scope for more to be done to improve conservation knowledge.”
Dr Anne Brenchley, BTO’s regional representative for Flintshire and Wrexham and a WOS council member, said: “BirdTrack is an excellent system for managing personal birding records while contributing to an international dataset that has huge conservation value. We had a great meeting at BASC and hope to run more of these training sessions across Wales.”