The Rutland Breeding Bird Atlas published in 1992 documented the county's breeding birds as part of the BTO's The New Atlas of Breeding Birds of Britain and Ireland 1988-1991.
Recording for Bird Atlas 2007-11 stimulated fieldwork for this update. All 117 Rutland tetrads were visited. Where timed vists were made, interested observers submitted lists of species breeding in their local area. The results were mapped at two levels, 'Present' and 'Breeding' to enable direct comparisons to be made with the 1988-1990 survey. The changes which have occured are in some cases dramatic.
"[...] Thirty miles northeast of the Banbury area, Rutland takes over, in all her proud post-1997 independence. This Atlas, by the same author as the previous work (Mitcham 1992) sensibly assists the reader to compare the two by using a close similarity of format.
Any reader who has been involved in the organization of a bird atlas for a large and complicated county will envy the birdwatchers and Natural History Society of Rutland, with its mere 117 tetrads surrounding an enormous lake. There have been the expected declines in
woodland and farmland species, as everywhere in the Midlands, but on Rutland Water Ospreys Pandion haliaetus are well established (see review of Mackrill et al. in Ibis 155: 916), there is a large colony of Cormorants Phalacrocorax carbo, Little Egrets Egretta garzetta have come and even Avocets Recurvirostra avosetta have attempted to breed. An Appendix provides a complete county species list for the Atlas period. It would have been helpful to find a coloured physical map on the endpapers."
- D.K.B., Ibis 156, 2014