AGM 23 November ? Change of Programme

Following the sad loss of our President Gordon Langsbury, his great friend and many times winner of our Photographic Competition, Dickie Duckett has kindly offered to step in and show us some of his superb images after the AGM business has concluded. His talk will be entitled ?More travels of Dickie Duckett? and we are sure will enthrall us as so many of his past images and travels have done.

It is important we have a ?quorum? for the meeting which requires a good attendance so please come along and we will make sure plenty of time is devoted to Dickie?s brilliant photography.

Colin Wilson –

Robert Gillmor Exhibition – Reading Museum

The Club is delighted to have been involved in planning for the Robert Gillmor Retrospective exhibition which started at Reading Museum at the end of October. The John Madejski Gallery now holds a wonderful selection of Robert?s work including some of his very earliest work from his schooldays. We encourage members to enjoy the exhibition which is there daily until April 2012.

The Club has a strong association with Robert, a President Emeritus and a member since its very earliest days when known as Reading Ornithological Club. As a consequence of this association and at Robert?s request, we have organised a number of events for early 2012 to which members are invited. Details are below or at www.readingmuseum.org.uk/events/talks/15. Please come along on any of the days for a talk or a walk. Watch the Reading Museum website or Club website, newsletters and emails for more information.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of a delightful new book Birds, Blocks & Stamps by Reading publisher, Two Rivers Press which explains amongst much more, how Robert went about producing the lino cut designs for a set of postage stamps called ?Post and Go? now available from special machines in major post offices such as Reading town centre. The small book is available for £12.50 from Two Rivers Press.

The programme of events arranged by the BOC, all free to everybody is as follows

12 January 2012 – Talk: Tufted Ducks and their cousins – behind the image ? Ray Reedman ? Reading Museum 13.00 ? 13.45

23 February – Walk: Tufted Ducks and their cousins ? Find the ducks – Led by Ray Reedman at Dinton Pastures, Car Park Mohawk Way, Woodley, RG5 4UE at 10.00 ? 12.00

25 February – Birders’ Day at the Museum: a day when your Committee and volunteers will talk casually to visitors about birding experiences and encourage membership of the Club. There will be two talks ?150 years of birds and birdwatching in Berkshire? by Renton Righelato at 12.00 to 12.45 and another from Neil Bucknell entitled ?The Birds of Berkshire – the challenge of recording and illustrating our avian history? at 14.00 to 14.45.

28 March – Talk: Spring Chorus in Reading ? Colin Wilson, learn birdsong you?ll hear around Reading this year. At 13.00 ? 13.45

19 April – Walk: Spring Chorus in Reading ? Find the singing birds – Led by Colin Wilson at Dinton Pastures, Car Park Mohawk Way, Woodley, RG5 4UE at 09.00 ? 11.00

Colin Wilson –

Project Parakeet ? help us learn more about them and their impact

If you have parakeets regularly visiting your garden you can help an important project gather more information about them.

Put simply, all that?s required is for you to allow the project to install a feeder in your garden (food paid for) and monitor birds present for 20 minutes a week. This would be for twelve months and the type of feeder would be changed by the project after 6 months to exclude the parakeets. So this is an easy way for you to help some important research from the comfort of your own house!

Please have a look at the webpage here and for more information you can visit www.projectparakeet.co.uk to learn more.

Hannah Peck from Imperial College, Silwood Park is the main contact and you can contact her and volunteer or ask questions at parakeet imperial.ac.uk

The Club would like to support research and surveys for birds and hopes you can help this project.

Colin Wilson –

Reshaping Fobney Island

For some years, the BOC has been working with the sponsors, Reading Borough Council, the Environment Agency, Thames Water and the Thames Valley Restoration Trust, to help design a wetland reserve just to the south of Reading centre, between the River Kennet and the Kennet & Avon Canal. This is now coming to fruition with a £500,000 project that started in September.

The project will see the island turned into a rich new wetland and wildflower hay-meadow habitat. The site is expected to attract a vast array of wildlife, including birds, bats, water voles, and otters. These works, together with river restoration on the River Kennet, will make the island a more enjoyable place for people to visit, especially for bird watchers and anglers.

The river restoration works will include restoring 310 metres of the River Kennet and introducing new river gravels to the channel to create ?riffles?. Pools, scrapes and reed-beds are to be created and the scheme will include two bird hides with views across the new wetlands. Information boards at the site entrance points will provide information about the Wetland Park and its wildlife. For a plan of the site please click here (NB: 6MB PDF – fast connection required).

Graham Scholey, Conservation Technical Specialist, said: ?This project will make a real difference to the diversity of wildlife at the site and I?m delighted we were able to start this week. Fobney Island is already very popular with local residents, and we hope the improvements will encourage even more people to enjoy this natural area.

The council will continue to manage and maintain the island after the work and will also be looking to volunteers to help with maintenance. We hope that BOC members will take part in a Friends of Fobney Island volunteer group that will be established with support from the project partners to help maintain the site and provide on-going educational opportunities. More details soon.

Renton Righelato –

Gordon Langsbury: President 1999-2011

It was with great sadness that we learnt last week of Gordon?s untimely death. Gordon had been an active member of Berkshire Ornithological Club (formerly the Reading Ornithological Club) for more than 25 years and became its Honorary President in 1999. Whenever his busy schedule allowed, he and his wife, Joy, were at Club meetings, welcoming our guests and enthusing our members.

A Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and chair of its Nature Group (1981-3), he was one of the most eminent bird photographers of this generation.He loved Islay, on which he co-authored the ?Birds of Islay? and worked extensively in northern Europe and particularly the arctic regions, to which he planned to return in 2012. He led trips and courses on bird photography in Europe and he was sought after throughout the UK for his fascinating and superbly illustrated lectures.

His slide lectures on his trips were highlights of the BOC season. He inaugurated the Club?s annual photographic competition, which he judged with a benign ruthlessness, always providing constructive comments on the entries that drove our standards ever upwards: the Gordon Langsbury Cup, awarded to the winner, is a lasting memorial. His Christmas identification quiz was an intensely contested affair, with participants often struggling with Gordon?s cache of tricky photos, the ones that don?t get published! The Club benefited greatly from his warm and friendly personality and wide range of contacts in the birding world.

He was a key member of the Club and an enthusiastic and supportive President – we will miss him sorely.

Renton Righelato –

To see some of Gordon?s work visit http://www.birdphoto.org.uk

BirdFair Trip on 20th August

As usual, the Berkshire Ornithological Club is sponsoring a coach to the Rutland Bird Watching Fair on Saturday 20th August

All those interested will be welcome to join us for a fun day of exhibitions, talks, and bird-watching ? you choose how to spend your time.

Exhibition includes optics, books, art, photography, travel etc. Top speakers and personalities from the birding world will be there. From the hides you have a good chance of spotting one of the local Ospreys, a variety of waders and ducks, and even a scarce Tree Sparrow.

Further details here.

Ray Reedman –

Trip to follow Swan Upping on July 20th

We have been contacted by Kay Webb of Swan Lifeline who, unusually, have a few spare spaces on their trip to follow the Swan Upping on July 20th.

If anyone is interested, there are details and contact information in the attached flyer.

Ted Rogers –

Swifts in Reading

Follow the fortunes of Swifts at their nest site in Reading on Doug Mackenzie Dodds’ video blog.

Berkshire’s breeding bird atlas – the last push

July and August are the last months of atlas surveying and it is a great time to demonstrate breeding of most of our species. Parties of recently fledged young of finches, warblers, tits etc are everywhere and many of our early breeders are now feeding their second broods. It’s also a good time for seeing owls hunting and hearing the young begging (Tawny owlets are particularly vocal right now) and Nightjars are still calling. All records confirming breeding are valuable, particularly for the less common species throughout Berkshire. We are also missing a lot of records of the nocturnal species.

If you can, please help complete the Atlas by roving in some of the less well-covered areas of the county, mostly the far west: SU27, 28, 35, 36, 37, 38 (around Kintbury, Hungerford, Lambourn). You can put records into the BTO site (you will need to identify the tetrad) or into berksbirds.co.uk (you just need to put in a grid reference and the breeding status code).

Venturing into less-visited aras can be rewarding – I have seen more Spotted Flycatchers and Lesser Whitethroats and a number of other species in the last week than in most years in Berkshire.

Good luck
Renton Righelato –

Reading RSPB Group Anniversary Seminar – September 10th

The Reading RSPB Group is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and is marking the event with a special seminar on Saturday 10th September. Details are in the attached flyer.

Ted Rogers –