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Data

Change in bird populations in the EU

About this data

Source
Eurostat (2022) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 7, 2022
Date range
1990–2021
Unit
(2000 = 100)

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Eurostat – EU wild bird populations

Bird monitoring in the EU is conducted under the umbrella of the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme. The scheme helps standardize data collection and data analysis practices across countries and produces three indices of the populations of common birds — index for all common birds (including 168 species), index for common farmland birds (39 species) and index for common forest birds (34 species).

The bird population index is measured relative to population size in the year 2000 (i.e. the value in 2000 = 100).

More information on this statistic is found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221102140322/https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/EN/env_biodiv_esms.htm

This dataset was last updated on the 30th November 2022 and is typically updated annually. It will therefore next be updated on Our World in Data from December 2023.

Retrieved on
December 7, 2022
Retrieved from
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/environment/biodiversity
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
European Bird Census Council, National BirdLife organisations, RSPB, and Czech Society for Ornithology (CSO) via Eurostat (2022). EU wild bird populations.

Bird monitoring in the EU is conducted under the umbrella of the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme. The scheme helps standardize data collection and data analysis practices across countries and produces three indices of the populations of common birds — index for all common birds (including 168 species), index for common farmland birds (39 species) and index for common forest birds (34 species).

The bird population index is measured relative to population size in the year 2000 (i.e. the value in 2000 = 100).

More information on this statistic is found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221102140322/https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/EN/env_biodiv_esms.htm

This dataset was last updated on the 30th November 2022 and is typically updated annually. It will therefore next be updated on Our World in Data from December 2023.

Retrieved on
December 7, 2022
Retrieved from
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/environment/biodiversity
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
European Bird Census Council, National BirdLife organisations, RSPB, and Czech Society for Ornithology (CSO) via Eurostat (2022). EU wild bird populations.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Change in bird populations in the EU”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Eurostat. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260512-085513/grapher/bird-populations-eu.html [online resource] (archived on May 12, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Eurostat (2022) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Eurostat (2022) – processed by Our World in Data. “Change in bird populations in the EU” [dataset]. Eurostat, “EU wild bird populations” [original data]. Retrieved May 13, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260512-085513/grapher/bird-populations-eu.html (archived on May 12, 2026).

Download

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bird-populations-eu.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear