Virus continues to threaten favourite UK garden bird - BTO

One of the UK’s most popular songbirds is in rapid decline, and garden owners are being encouraged to share their sightings with researchers.

When Paul McCartney recorded the famous Beatles song ‘Blackbird’ at Abbey Road Studios, the distinctive sound of a singing male Blackbird was added to the final mix, courtesy of the studio’s vast collection of sound effects. This particular Blackbird had been recorded three years earlier, in a west London garden. Sadly, that most familiar of sounds has become an increasingly scarce one in and around the English capital’s green spaces in recent years, following worrying declines.

In 2024, The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) launched a pioneering survey to try to map this rate of decline in London’s Blackbirds, and to see whether similar population slumps were occurring elsewhere across the UK.
Initial results from that first year certainly show something of a north-south divide, with signs that Blackbirds are doing better in the north, and particularly north-west England, while they continue to struggle in London, and to a lesser extent the wider south-east. Researchers from BTO are hoping to encourage yet more members of the public to get involved in 2025, especially in our larger towns and cities, so that they can try to identify any further notable changes.
The decline of London’s Blackbirds has been linked to the recent appearance of a mosquito-borne virus which was first detected in England in the summer of 2020.