Recording for the final breeding season of the Bird Atlas commences on 1 April 2011. There are 85 tetrads where plans are in place to carry out TTVs this season, which will complete the programme of Timed Tetrad Visits for the Breeding Atlas. Thank you to everyone who has helped make this happen.

However, as everyone knows you will not record all the species present in a tetrad during the course of two 2-hour TTVs, and if you limit your visits to just two per tetrad there will be several species for which you are unlikely to collect evidence confirming breeding. The more Roving Records that can be gathered for each tetrad the more complete each tetrad’s species list will be, and the more visits you make to a tetrad the more species you will obtain evidence of confirmed breeding for. The task therefore this breeding season is not only to complete the programme of TTVs, but also to upgrade the evidence of breeding species for as many species as possible in each tetrad. No tetrad requiring a TTV should have less than 10 species with confirmed breeding evidence, and most should have at least 20.

To help you target where we particularly need more Roving Records take a look at the March map of the month, which gives a general indication of the number of species in each tetrad which have confirmed breeding records. You can use this to identify the tetrads which need more recording to upgrade the evidence of breeding species.

To enable you to see in detail the breeding status of which species have been recorded where, please click on to one of the 10-km squares on the map of Sussex below. This will pull up an Excel spreadsheet showing in detail all the species that have been recorded in each tetrad of the selected 10-km square, in breeding seasons 1, 2 and 3 of the Atlas, and it also shows their breeding status. (A few of these records have yet to be validated – including some description species which have yet to be approved by SOSRC and a few others which are being queried – but well over 99% of the records are valid).

You may find it useful to use these spreadsheets to focus your recording:

• on tetrads where fewer species have been recorded;
• to target particular species where evidence of confirmed breeding should be sought.

These sheets include all the records through to October 2010 that have been submitted to the BTO, but negligible numbers of 2010 SOS records.

As the final breeding season of recording takes place, the BTO Atlas website will be updated as TTVs, Roving Records and BirdTrack records are submitted online. If you are registered to log into the BTO Atlas website you can get an update of the species recorded in any tetrad by going to the “Any square summary” which shows up on your Atlas log-in page. This will be a good way to keep up-to-date with the additions and upgrades in breeding status being made to the breeding season species lists.

Please use all these sources of information to help you focus on where best to concentrate your recording efforts.