The first season of the 4-year Atlas project has now been completed with at least 372 winter Timed Tetrad Visits completed in Sussex, which is well over a third of all the winter surveys we need to carry out.   Many, many thanks to all of you who have participated.

If you have carried out a winter survey but have not entered your results on-line or submitted your paper forms yet please do so as soon as you can.   The yellow tetrads in the map below show  where (at 9 March) we are still waiting for second TTV’s to be submitted on line, the black tetrads show where both winter surveys have been submitted.  At least another 16 TTV’s have also been completed but the paper forms have yet to be processed by the BTO.

Timed Tetrad visits made in Winter

The next season of TTV’s starts on 1st April, with each tetrad needing one breeding season survey between 1 April and 31 May and a second survey between 1 June and 31 July.   If you would like to help out but have not been assigned a tetrad to survey please contact Helen Crabtree at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .   Also have a look at the map below to see which tetrads have yet to be allocated…. you will see that we are still looking for volunteers, particularly in the east of Sussex, but also in a few parts of West Sussex too.

Tetrads allocated for Timed Visits

The next TTV’s are breeding season surveys so on your TTV’s you will need to record not only the number of each species you see, but also the “highest” breeding code.  And remember that EVERYONE should start recording breeding season codes on any records from now until July, whether you are submitting them to the SOS or to the BTO.  (If you are not sure what the Breeding codes are they are shown on the TTV forms, http://www.birdtrack.net/, the Records section of this SOS website and on the SOS Excel Record Capture software).

As you will see from the map below we have not been very successful recording Tawny Owls in the first winter season.  I am sure that when the SOS records are added we will have some more tetrads on the map, but nonetheless this map does show how much we are reliant on casual records to record nocturnal species.   So if you hear any Owl, or a Nightjar or a Nightingale, please do let us have a record of it.   We really are depending on your casual records to build up a good picture of such nocturnal species.

Tawny Owl

All the maps above are correct as at 9 March.  To see any updates and to find out other data about the Atlas activity in Sussex go to http://blx1.bto.org/atlas-results/allocsuss.html

Richard Cowser
(Joint Bird Atlas Co-ordinator)