Bird trends in the Netherlands are explained by habitat type rather than by rarity. Inger et al . (2015. Common European birds are declining rapidly while less abundant species’ numbers are rising. Ecol. Lett. 18: 28–36) concluded that in the period 1980–2009 populations of common European birds declined while less abundant species increased in number. The main aim of this paper is to test if this also holds for the Netherlands. Our first hypothesis proposes the opposite effect; namely that: (1) common birds have become more common and rare birds more rare. We tested three additional hypotheses: (2) that in the Netherlands, habitat type plays an important role in population change, with a strong decline of farmland species, (3) that larger birds have increased more than small birds; and (4) that insectivorous birds have decreased more than birds of other feeding guilds. We used the same methodology as used by Inger et al . (2015) for 110 of the investigated 144 bird species that breed in the Netherlands. We ...