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Birds

County Recorders: West area Chris Gregory, North-east area Richard Walden, South-east area Steve Fryett

See Map for details of areas



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This is by far the most popular class for naturalists in the County with over 2 million records on the SBIS database. Most recording is carried out by members of the Suffolk Bird Group (SBG, formerly SOG). The SBG website includes a useful Guide to recording Birds in Suffolk. Records of rarities and applications for access to such confidential data are dealt with by the Suffolk Ornithological Records Committee (SORC). Suffolk Birds is published annually by Suffolk Naturalists' Society and gives a review of the previous year's records. Back issues of the SBG Newsletter The Harrier are available online.

All correspondence used for compiling the annual Bird Report since 1973 is housed at SBIS, it is roughly sorted (and coded) into date order. There is a species-based card index for all 1973 records. For 1979–90 a species index has been created by Bob Warren. From 1991–5, SBIS took over this role and records were collated using the RECORDER program. Data was first edited by the County Bird Recorders and over this period some 89,000 records were added. From 1996 the three recorders used Jack Levene's 'Club Recorder', and more recently data has been stored and processed using the Mapmate software. At the end of the year, records are collated for production of the annual Bird Report and a copy is stored at SBIS.

A tetrad level survey of the county's breeding birds ran from 1988–92. The first three years were organised in conjunction with a national survey organised by the BTO. All records were computerised at SBIS using the RECORDER database. There are over 53,000 records from the years 1988–94. A provisional atlas The Birds of Suffolk was produced in 1993 incorporating all this survey data, as well as maps collated from tetrad survey and other records held at SBIS were published in 2003.

Another county tetrad level survey, run in parallel with the BTO National Survey, was undertaken 2007–11. The results of this survey have been compiled by Margaret Regnault to produce the Suffolk Bird Atlas

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