BIRDWATCH AT PULBOROUGH BROOKS RSPB

THIS month has seen the beginning of one of the most important surveys of avian life in the country.

Over the next four years, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is organising the survey work for the next breeding and wintering bird atlases.

A bird atlas, for those of you who are new to the concept, is simply a map of where birds live, and of course (and just as importantly), where they do not.

The BTO has published bird atlases before. In 1976 it published the first breeding bird atlas of Britain and Ireland, which was repeated using comparable methods in 1994.