Introduction
BirdWatch Ireland, with funding from the Heritage Council and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Marine (DAFM), is developing a set of hotspot maps to indicate the presence of farmland birds in Ireland. For Heritage Week we are delighted to provide an interim update on this work. At the time of writing, twenty-five species of birds that depend on farmland habitat have been selected for inclusion in this project. These include ground-nesting birds such as the Redshank, Golden Plover, Lapwing and Curlew, smaller birds of the countryside such as the Yellowhammer, Tree Sparrow and Twite, and birds of prey such as the Barn Owl, Kestrel, and Hen Harrier. A few of those target species are pictured below.
We are continuing to develop the maps and by October 2021, the completion date for the current work, will have developed a valuable tool in helping develop policies for protecting birds and biodiversity in Ireland.
The 15% of 10km grid squares with the highest scores (to date) are highlighted below, as the key hotspots for Farmland Birds in Ireland.
Please note that this project is still under development. The datasets, data processing, scoring algorithm, scoring parameters and visualizations are all subject to refinement.
For a more complete discussion of the mapping and other draft maps please see the page at:
