Bird assignment

Tuesday 1st December 2020

I submitted the last university assignment for 2020 today. It isnt good for all sorts of reasons - mostly because the survey itself was rushed due to Covid so the data is not really useful. However I did learn a lot - we were looking at the diversity and number of birds in different habitats in the UK. Birds are very well researched and have been for years - they are a good indicator of wildlife biodiversity in general and they are much easier to count than mammals or invertebrates. As ever there is a decline in diversity - 11% since 1970 but that hides the issue that there is a 55% decline in farmland birds. There is some really interesting research on conservation and how the government agri-environment schemes can help. So overall the assignment was interesting just difficult to turn into anything useful. My conclusion was do a better survey next time - not sure how many points I get for that! The picture is from our class Whatsapp group - to remind us that we love birds even thought we hate the assignment! Its a long tailed tit looking cute!