ROC Calendar 2007

We have produced an ROC calendar for 2007. It features Tufted Duck, Waxwing, Buzzard, Kingfisher, Willow Warbler, Lapwing,
Yellowhammer, Swallow, House Sparrow, Red Kite, Barn Owl, Fieldfare and Robin. All of these are beautifully photographed and
generously donated by our President, Gordon Langsbury.

The calendar is wire-bound and in a handy A4 portrait format and will be available to ROC members at just £5 at all meetings in
the autumn. You may reserve any number of copies in advance (this will help to ensure adequate supplies) or, alternatively,
arrange to have one or more posted to you (p&p extra). Non Members may purchase the calendar for £6 plus p&p.

To place an order, contact Ray Reedman on 0118 9864338 or email meander2@hotmail.com.

Colin Wilson –

Bird Fair 2005 update

Reading FC will be at home on Aug 20th, so I will now have to use the same Reading pick-up as last year – the
stadium would have been easier for the M4.

• 6.30 a.m Newbury at the Wharfe
• 7.00 a.m Reading at the main entrance to Whiteknights Park (park in Elmhurst Road)
• 7.20 a.m Bray Nature Centre

Some seats still available.

Ray Reedman –

Birdwatchers Code of Conduct

At a recent Committee meeting it was decided that we should renew our obligation to ensure our members know of, and
are encouraged to act in accordance with the Code.
This has been rewritten recently and is now a longer, more complex document than previously.

Colin Wilson –

Birdwatching and its rewards

From a birding message Group I received a request to take an American visitor out for a walk and show him some British birds. As the visitor was staying in Surrey, where I live, I volunteered to help and chose a place near where he was staying at Cobham. My selection was the RHS garden area near Wisley.

I planned a route from an OS map and went a couple of days before the event to check the suitablilty. This opened my eyes to a completely new area and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring a new place in Surrey. This visit, a little more rushed than the one to take place a couple of days later, produced 47 species, nothing rare but a good list.

John Berners, the visitor works for BP in Houston, Texas and he has only been birding for 6 months or so. We met on a bright sunny warm morning and ventured around an area ranging from Wisley Common, the village, the local sewage works, open fields of parkland nature, Pyrford Golf Course, the River Wey and the Wey Navigation (canal) finishing with a walk through the RHS gardens. On the day, we found 46 species, not all the same as my first walk. Sadly, he missed Kingfisher and Bullfinch but he saw Common Tern and Grey Wagtail, both missing on my first walk.

John would be willing to help anyone who is visiting Houston and can provide some good internet contacts ? please let me know if you might be going so I can put you in touch. I found the exercise most rewarding, showing off our birds to a visitor is always a pleasure and I can recall trying to find someone to help me abroad on a couple of occasions to no avail. What better than someone helping you on their home ground! John made a very nice gesture at the end. He gave me a cheque for £20 for the ROC Conservation Fund. So, rewards all round and not least for me having a new area to show to people in future.

Colin Wilson –

Nightjar Walk

A Nightjar walk will be held on Wednesday 1st June 2005. Meet at Round Oak Pub at Padworth (SU628651) at 8pm.

Ruth Angus –

R.O.C: Extra Programme items for May and August

Wednesday 25th May (N.B. In the Main Hall at Leighton Park School, Pepper Lane)

?Red Kites in the Chilterns?, a talk about the reintroduction and successful spread of these wonderful birds, given by club member, Brian Clews, co-author of ?Where to Watch Birds in the Thames Valley and the Chilterns?. Non-members welcome (£2 guest fee)

Saturday 20th August

A coach trip to the British Birdwatching Fair at Rutland
(ROC, in consultation with NDOC and East Berks RSPB) Non-members welcome.

ROC are sponsoring a coach*, which will start at the Wharfe, Newbury at 6.30 a.m., pick up at Reading at about 7 a.m. and do a final pick up at Bray Nature Centre at about 7.20 a.m.
The cost of £25 will include group entry rate to the event. We expect to have about 7 hours there. Come along to enjoy a huge exhibition of bird art, photography, equipment, travel etc. and to see regular denizens of the site: Tree Sparrows, migrant waders and, maybe, one of the several Ospreys. N.B. early booking is advisable.
(*This will be a full-sized coach with toilet. There will also be a short break at a service area)

Contact Ray Reedman (tel. 0118 9864338, email: meander2@hotmail.com)

Ray Reedman –

Scopac offer

Those of you who are interested in buying a Scopac for carrying your telescope on your back, like a rucksack, will be interested to know of an arrangement I have made with the supplier, specially for the ROC and its members.

The original Scopac was £59.99. It has now been improved and called a Scopac plus. Additionally, it has a Digipac option which is a carrying facility that fits between the tripod legs, suitable for camera etc or maybe lunch! This would normally cost another £15.

LVS Products who make the product have offered the Scopac with the Digipac to our members for a short period at just £55. This is a substantial saving on the £74.99 so if you?re interested please contact Paul Lee on 07810 560916 or 01263 511587. When you call make sure you mention your membership of the Reading Ornithological Club to claim your discount.

Any purchasers of the original Scopac who wish to add the Digipac can do so at a special price for ROC members, if you call Paul Lee on the above numbers.

In case you wish to know how the Scopac is doing, several members bought them earlier this year and all those I have spoken to rate them very highly. Personally, I have had much use from it and it has been highly practical and usable in practice. The addition of the Digipac is exactly the adaption needed to make it truly practical. I have no hesitation in recommending it based on my experience.

The Club and the writer take no responsibility for the product or transactions made of course and neither are in any way financially involved in this offer which has been developed as a free service to members. Any problems should be referred directly to LVS Products.

Colin Wilson –

Reminder about extra Indoor meeting – 27th April

Just a reminder to everyone that we have an extra ROC meeting booked for the
coming week. We look forward to seeing a good turnout to enjoy what promises
to be an evening of great interest and pleasure, when one of the club’s most
successful photographers will share with us an expanded version of the
programme he originally prepared for last autumn.

Wednesday, 27th April 2005 (at our usual venue)

Dickie Duckett will present “My Photographic Year”.

This is the programme that was postponed due to technical failure at the
AGM.

Dickie once again won the Gordon Langsbury Trophy for the best overall entry
in the 2005 Photographic Competition, so we can be assured of an evening of
quality.

As Renton Righelato is be unable to be present Colin Wilson will now report
on the findings of the Questionnaire.

Ray Reedman –

Reminder about extra Indoor meeting – 27th April

Just a reminder to everyone that we have an extra ROC meeting booked for the
coming week. We look forward to seeing a good turnout to enjoy what promises
to be an evening of great interest and pleasure, when one of the club’s most
successful photographers will share with us an expanded version of the
programme he originally prepared for last autumn.

Wednesday, 27th April 2005 (at our usual venue)

Dickie Duckett will present “My Photographic Year”.

This is the programme that was postponed due to technical failure at the
AGM.

Dickie once again won the Gordon Langsbury Trophy for the best overall entry
in the 2005 Photographic Competition, so we can be assured of an evening of
quality.

As Renton Righelato is be unable to be present Colin Wilson will now report
on the findings of the Questionnaire.

Ray Reedman –

Spare Equipment or books? They are needed in the Balkans

I set out here a message from Tricia Marcouse who many of you will know from her BBOWT and Reading Urban Wildlife Group activities. I commend this cause to you and will be helping out with a few items I have such as old field guides and binoculars. Let me know if you wish to make a donation, you can bring them to one of our extra meetings or a field trip and pass them on via any of the Committee members.

Birding in Bosnia in Herzegovena

Last month I became the 36th member of the Bosnian Ornithological Society; my membership number in RSPB is not so memorable!

I am working in BiH for two years to support the environmental field inspectors and to widen public participation in environmental management. The focus is to reduce industrial pollution, but all environmental issues are fair game and, wherever possible, we will push forward the message that their habitats and species are a valuable asset and should be protected.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has a population of four million, and an area of 51,000 square kilometres with a widely varying landscape. In the coastal zone it is Mediterranean climate growing kiwi, pomegranate and tangerines, in the East it is the Danube flood plain with fertile soils growing maize as far as the eye can see, and the middle is mountain ranges with towns in the valley bottoms. It is a spectacular country with massive gorges, waterfalls and ancient forests. There are several national designations of natural parks and nature areas, but only one international designation at present: the RAMSAR site Hutovo Blato that provides winter quarters for ducks and geese and is a migration stopover and flyover point in spring and autumn.

Despite the variation in habitat, the country bird list is small compared to UK?s: only 317 species according to Birdlife International. Whether this is the real number is anyone?s guess, since with only 4 active recorders in the country at present, data is a little scarce. There isn?t a lot of general interest in natural history in Bosnia other than the gathering of plants for medicinal use.

We will be trying to change this, and would like some help from you in two ways.

Over the next two years the BOS will try to tap into EU LIFE funding to run surveys to encourage identification and reporting from the general public, focusing this on schools. If we get the grants, the LIFE budget will pay for printing costs and for the cost of employing someone for data entry. We can extend this person?s work to digitise previous records and begin to develop a national data recording system.

However, we won?t get money for purchasing general identification guides or for equipment.

We would like to be able to support teachers that are encouraging their school to take part in the surveys by providing those schools with a basic natural history kit: some not too heavy binoculars, hand lenses and identification guides. Identification guides need to cover the Balkan area of course AND have good pictures, since the text will not be used by most of the children.

The second element is for the more serious recording purposes: we need to find better quality second hand equipment to support the few existing recorders and to recruit more.

If you can help at all with these requests, please get in touch with me or with Colin Wilson or Martin Sell.

Finally, if anyone out there is interested in a holiday in 2006 to uncharted mountainous territory please get in touch towards the Autumn. I haven?t worked out any of the details yet as we are testing areas, freedom from minefields, accommodation and potential guides this year, but we will probably run two holidays in BiH, flying into Dubrovnik and then doing a route that goes via Hutovo Blato (where there is a 35 bed guest house inside the reserve) and in a loop through mountain areas forests and gorges and back down to Dubrovnik. (this is because flying to Dubrovnik is less than half the price of flying to Sarajevo, and is direct from Gatwick). It will be a holiday with a difference, and with a major requirement for record keeping to fill in some of the gaps on the national database!

Tricia Marcouse
tricia@marcouse.com

Joint Chair

East Berks Regional Committee

BBOWT

Colin Wilson –