2009-2016, ECON Ecological Consultancy Ltd., Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm, Ornithological Monitoring during Construction and Operation series https://portal.medin.org.uk/portal/start.php?tpc=015_6608f5d2-5670-4bd0-b10b-c1a4adf9e0a0 The ornithological monitoring of the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm (OWF) required under the conditions of Marine licence L/2011/00153/8 (updating Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 Licence 33369/10/3) was to fulfil two objectives: 1) Determine if there is any change in bird distribution, use and passage, measured by species’ abundance and behaviour, at the wind farm site, 1 km and 2-4 km buffer zones and the reference (control) site. 2) Validate the collision risk modelling to identify avoidance rates of the Sheringham Shoal Wind farm site with reference to tern species [Sandwich Tern Thalasseus sandvicensis] in the breeding season. Objective 1 was delivered through a boat-based monitoring programme consisting of 151 surveys spanning seven years (February 2009 to February 2016) thereby providing one year of pre-construction (baseline) surveys, three years of construction and three years of operation monitoring. To enhance the duration of the baseline, a further 29 surveys from the characterisation phase for the site (March 2004 to January 2006) were added to the dataset (total of n=180 surveys) for the purpose of additional control-impact analysis. The quality of the results ultimately delivered by this project reinforces the view from other recent work (e.g. Vanermen et al. 2016) that boat-based surveys may be an excellent platform for studies of seabird distribution in relation to wind farms. Objective 2 was addressed using visual tracking of Sandwich Terns heading toward the wind farm from a rigid-hulled inflatable boat. This recently developed, albeit now widely used, technique has been targeted at terns but is equally applicable to all gulls and skuas. As applied in this study, the technique can provide unique insight into the behavioural response of birds to a wind farm. A key advantage of visual tracking over remote methods is that every aspect of bird behaviour can be observed. Accordingly, the level of detail provided by this study is thought to be unprecedented in the study of the interactions between a breeding seabird and wind farm development. 201407