Blackcap replaces chaffinch as the most common bird
Keystone-SDA
The blackcap is now the most common bird in Switzerland. According to the Swiss Ornithological Institute’s 2025 bird monitoring programme, it has displaced the chaffinch from first place.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
There are now almost one million breeding pairs of blackcaps in Switzerland, according to the Swiss Ornithological Institute. The species is benefiting from the expansion of forests at higher altitudes.
+ You’re in luck if you spot these Swiss birds
Another reason for the increase is that more and more birds are spending the winter in Europe instead of migrating south.
At the same time, according to the monitoring, chaffinch populations have declined. “Regardless of the change at the top, the decline of the chaffinch is puzzling because its causes are largely unknown,” the report states.
Other well-known birds such as the sparrow and the blackbird still made it into the top ten most common species. The street pigeon, on the other hand, is not even in the top 50.
For Bird Monitoring 2025, around 300 employees of the Swiss Ornithological Institute spent over 3,000 hours collecting data on breeding birds.
More
More
Sparrows, Switzerland’s most common bird, are dwindling in Europe
Adapted from French by AI/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch