Eurasian Shorebird Survey
(ESS)
Objectives
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Supporting shorebird conservation with regular and structured shorebird counts on as many coastal and inland locations as possible in the Eurasian and North African region;
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Identifying key coastal and non-coastal shorebird sites;
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Supporting relevant schemes with up-to-date data;
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Gelping to improve counting methods and technics, and;
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Increasing the number of citizen-scientists.
Geographic scope
The Eurasian Shorebird Survey (ESS) covers the whole Europe including the Canary Islands, Iceland, Svalbard, Africa north of the Sahara, the whole Middle East. It also includes Asia with Sri Lanka, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Japan, Taiwan the Philippines and the Indonesian islands excluding Papua New Guinea.
Register your interest and location
The Eurasian Shorebird Survey (ESS) requires some commitments to maximising the value of data. The recommended counting dates ensure synchronised data submission and regularity. The dates below are guidelines but +/- 2-day difference is acceptable. More data can be submitted between the core counting dates.
It is better to have the fewer (the most important) sites involved and get them covered on the counting dates than having more sites with sporadic counts.
Registered sites (ranking order)
Registered Locations
106
Registered Countries
33
Hungary – 19
Spain – 15
India – 9
United Kingdom – 8
Greece – 5
Turkey – 5
Taiwan – 4
France – 3
Iceland – 3
Kuwait – 3
Romania – 3
Czechia – 2
Faroe Islands (Denmark) – 2
Georgia – 2
Italy – 2
Kazakhstan – 2
Montenegro – 2
Sweden – 2
Albania – 1
Algeria – 1
Indonesia – 1
Iran – 1
Japan – 1
Mongolia – 1
Norway – 1
Pakistan – 1
Portugal – 1
Qatar – 1
Russia – 1
Saudi Arabia – 1
Serbia – 1
Singapore – 1
Slovenia – 1
Data submission and sharing
The three ways of reporting make it easy to contribute to this program.
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eBird users can directly share the relevant checklists with us using the username worldshorebirdsday.
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If eBird is not applicable, a personalised Excel sheet will be shared with each surveyor to fill it online.
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Surveyors keep using their everyday national bird-recording protocol. Data from the survey dates will be downloaded and imported to the ESS database.
Counting dates 2021
All counts carried out for the Eurasian Shorebird Survey (ESS) fall onto the middle weekend of the month (ideally Saturday).
The most important element of this survey is regularity. Population trends can be drawn only if data collection is methodological and keeps the desired frequency. It's always good to have a substitute surveyor in case personal involvement is not possible.
Please these dates to your Google Calendar.
15–17 January 2021
12–14 February 2021
12–14 March 2021
9–11 April 2021
23–25 April 2021
7–9 May 2021
21–23 May 2021
11–13 June 2021
16–18 July 2021
20–22 August 2021
3–5 September 2021
17–19 September 2021
8–10 October 2021
22–24 October 2021
5–7 November 2021
17–19 December 2021
Breeding Shorebirds
The ESS not only focuses on migratory shorebirds. Monitoring the distribution and size of breeding shorebird populations is equally important. It is welcomed and highly recommended to use the breeding codes of eBird during the breeding season.
How can you take part?
1
Register your location(s)
Choose a site what is suitable for shorebirds and register it with the form above. Repeat the registration if you plan to count shorebirds on more than one location.
2
Count
shorebirds
Visit your survey sites on any of the days of the count weekend as listed above. Count shorebirds as precisely as it is possible and cover the whole area.
3
Share
count results
A year subscription for the Birds Of The World web portal will be gifted to someone who participates and regularly submits counting results to eBird. The winner will be drawn later next year. More information is at https://birdsoftheworld.org
If you cannot wait until we have the winner, you can get access to the website at a one-off 50% discount today. Use EURASIANSHOREBIRDS
redeeming code during checkout.
In Partnership with
Get ready
to win
Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email us.