Robins, great tits and garden warblers had their worst breeding season ever recorded last year as a result of the bad weather, the British Trust for Ornithology has said.

The three birds were among 11 of the 25 species monitored by a ringing scheme over the past 25 years which saw their productivity fall significantly below average in 2008.

According to the organiser of the Trust's Constant Effort Sites (CES) ringing scheme, Mark Grantham, last year's wet and windy summer once again played a large part in reducing the number of chicks birds were able to rear successfully.

Only the reed warbler managed a slightly better than average breeding season.

And the blackbird, great tit and song thrush saw their productivity drop by more than 30 per cent, with the thrushes witnessing a fall of 38 per cent in the number of young they managed to rear.

The CES monitoring is undertaken using mist nets to catch and ring the birds for periods during the breeding season at 120 sites in the UK and Ireland, comparing the number of juvenile birds with adults to analyse breeding success.

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Last year's problems followed on from 2007's low productivity, with seven species suffering their worst breeding season to date in the wake of the wettest May to July on record.

Mr Grantham said bad weather at key moments of the breeding season could prevent adult birds from foraging effectively and drench the chicks in the nest.

In 2007 the wettest weather occurred during the middle of the breeding season whereas last year it was during the end of the season, with a greater impact on later breeders.

He said: "The timing of these heavy rainfall events is key.

"Birds are pretty tolerant of these things, but if it's just at the wrong time it's really going to hit them. If you have huge downpours, food becomes inaccessible."

He also said that prolonged periods of rain would drive the parents away from the nest for longer to find food, leaving chicks at risk of falling victim to downpours which would drench and chill them.

Experts have also reported that the last two summers have been "diabolical" for moths, he said, which causes huge problems for birds such as blue tits and great tits which are heavily reliant on them to feed their young.

And he warned that if unpredictable and extreme weather events became more common with climate change, it would cause problems for many breeding birds.

"If birds can't predict from one season to another what will happen, there is no way that they can cope with that.

"If in climate change scenarios these unpredictable springs and summers are going to be an increasing feature, that will cause huge problems for a lot of them."

But it is not all bad news, with long-tailed tits one of the species benefiting from milder winters – another consequence of climate change.

According to the BTO's Garden BirdWatch survey, some 43 per cent of gardens were host to the bird in the last week of 2008, compared with 25 per cent the same time the previous year.

The Trust believes the long-tailed tits could be laying eggs earlier in response to climatic changes, avoiding the damaging rains which hit other species, while warmer winters have also helped boost numbers.

But the small bird is particularly susceptible to severe weather and the recent cold snap could have hit them badly, so the BTO is calling on people to help monitor their numbers this spring and see how they have done.