Seabird Nesting Counts (British Isles)

This dataset contains counts of breeding seabirds derived from surveys by professional and volunteer ornithologists from within sub-sites defined using 6-figure OS grid references. Counts were derived from a complete census of seabird colonies in Britain and Ireland as part of the Seabird 2000 census.

The Seabird 2000 dataset contains data from a full census of all of the breeding seabirds in Britain and Ireland. The data was gathered between the years 1999 and 2003 from both coastal and inland colonies. The main objectives of the survey were: to obtain distribution and population information for all 25 species of seabird that regularly breed in the UK and Ireland; to get baseline figures for those species that had been surveyed poorly up to now.

The dataset contains points representing counts of nesting seabirds in sub-sites - stretches of coastline showing start and end point of subsites about 1km in length. Also points representing counts of nesting seabirds in sub-sites away from the coast which represent polygons.

This dataset is visualised as a mapping layer on Natural England's MAGIC site http://magic.defra.gov.uk/MagicMap.aspx.

For more information about the Seabird 2000 census please see JNCC's website http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/seabird2000.