Strong increase birding records since 2010
October 26, 2014
Many people have carried out bird counts in Bulgaria this year. As far as we know seven groups travelled to Bulgaria and carried out counts. Already many counts (186!) have been uploaded to the website pc.trektellen.nl. A very good result.
Encouraging is that other bird watchers, that don't take part in the bird counts, upload their sightings to www.observation.org. These data are also available for the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds. In the first graph you see the number of observations of birds in Bulgaria registered at this website. There is a tremendous increase after 2010, when the project 'Bird counts in Southeast Europe' started; year 2014 shows the data until October. Also the number of bird species increased (2nd graph). Interesting is the (small) peak in 2008 in number of observations and number of species. In 2009 the numbers are again at the level of the years before 2008. It is not yet known what could be the cause of these peaks. It are mainly Dutch bird watchers that upload their sightings to www.observation.org. Maybe more Dutch bird watchers travelled to Bulgaria in 2008, than in the years before, or these bird watchers were more eager to upload their sightings to observado.org than the ones that went to Bulgaria in the years before 2008.
