Monitoring special breeding birds (BBV)

The Special Breeding Birds Flanders (BBV) project aims to monitor the annual change in the number of rare and relatively uncommon colony-dwelling and ‘exotic’ breeding birds. This is a monitoring project in which the count is performed in the same way every year, to ensure the comparability of the results. A number of the species are so rare, or occur in such concentrated patterns, that they need to be counted throughout Flanders every year to make a proper scientific analysis of the results possible. A sampling method in which only a limited number of sites are counted every year is inadequate for such species. Sampling methods (with a limited number of sample sites or routes/transects) are very useful for less rare species, however.