This survey seems to have captured the imagination of birdwatchers in Wales and volunteers, many new to surveying, have come forward to help. Whilst a complete survey of Wales is highly desirable, this was considered to be too ambitious at the start of the project and so a random, stratified sample of 576 tetrads (a block of 4 x 1-km-squares) was produced. This number was considered to be the minimum number of tetrads required to produce a robust population estimate for Wales. The tetrads chosen were based on those surveyed in 1975, 1996 and the Britain and Ireland Atlas 2007-11. Wales was divided into regions, tetrads assigned to each region and Local Organisers recruited. An online booking system was created, thanks to the BTO and funding from Natural Resources Wales. Amazingly by the beginning of the survey season 72% of tetrads had been booked by volunteers. At least three regions, Brecon, East Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire rose to the challenge and have planned for complete coverage over the two years of the survey. Other regions hope to do additional work and cover all the tetrads where Rooks were confirmed as breeding during the 2007-11 Atlas.

 The survey season began at the beginning of March, although the peak time for Rook nest- building tends to be towards the end of March and into early April. By the end of March 85% of tetrads were booked and records started to accumulate on the Online Recording System set up by Cofnod (the Local Environmental Records Centre for North Wales) on behalf of all the LERCs in Wales. We were fortunate that the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park provided electronic tetrad maps for all the Priority tetrads.

 It is not too late to get involved in this survey. You can still sign up for the remaining 15% of Priority tetrads and if these are not close to home then contact your Local Organisers and they can allocate additional tetrads that may be more convenient. You can even provide records of individual rookeries. All the information about how to get involved can be found on the WOS website.

 It is far too early to gain an understanding of the distribution of Rooks or know whether the species has continued to decline since the 2007-11 Atlas but some initial analyses will be undertaken later this year and we will keep you updated. It does, however, appear that several observers have been reporting absence or diminution of rookeries at well-known sites but on the other side of the coin several small rookeries have been found which had not been recorded before.

 This is the first time that WOS has attempted to organise and coordinate a species survey across all of Wales. We shouldn’t underestimate the time and effort required to do this but the indications so far are that bringing together resources from a wide number of organisations and individuals has been successful and who knows could be repeated again at some time in the future.