Please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

Ray combines his love of birds and travel with a deep understanding of language and history. As a retired Senior Master of a successful independent school Ray rekindled a life-long love of the natural world by teaching courses on ornithology and travelling the world to watch birds.  He is a long-standing member of the BOC, having spent many years organising our meetings.

His new book is a unique resource for anyone interested in how the names have evolved, what they mean, and how errors and misunderstandings have sometimes been perpetuated in the names we now use.

We will be meeting in person in Room 109 in the Palmer Building as usual, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.

Please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

The very entertaining Jono is returning for the third time to the club with a talk on the North Norfolk coast, somewhere many of us have been to.

Please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

This is our annual joint lecture with the University of Reading.

Tim Birkhead is Emeritus Professor of behaviour and evolution at the University of Sheffield. His research on promiscuity and sperm competition in birds helped to reshape our understanding of bird mating systems. He initiated and has maintained a long-term population study of Guillemots on Skomer since 1972. Tim has written 15 books, including Promiscuity (2000), the award-winning The Wisdom of Birds (2008), Bird Sense (2012) and The Most Perfect Thing (2016). His most recent book is on the Guillemot’s closest relative, the Great Auk.

Few extinct birds are as instantly recognisable as the Great Auk. After centuries of persecution, the last Great Auks were killed in 1844, before any ornithologist or scientist ever saw one alive. Piecing together this bird’s extraordinary life has been a challenge, but research by Tim and others, using the few surviving eggs and skins, in the last few years has revealed new information and exposed some old errors. It is these relics and the dodgy way they were sometimes acquired that constitute the Great Auk’s mysterious afterlife.

We will be meeting in person in Room 109 in the Palmer Building as usual, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.

Please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

Now is the time for BOC members to show us their expertise at photographing birds in three categories – Portrait, Flight/Action, and Birds in Berkshire.

We will be meeting in person in Room 109 in the Palmer Building as usual, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.

Please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

‘Matt Tree Sparrow’ is a licenced bird ringer, passionate about conserving farmland birds in Wiltshire.

In 1999 he set up the Wiltshire Tree Sparrow Recovery Project as Conservation Officer for the Wiltshire Ornithological Society, with assistance from the RSPB. Since then it has grown to include over 1,100 nest boxes and 12 major feeding stations over across an area of 700 sq km!

We will be meeting in person in Room 109 in the Palmer Building as usual, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.

Note this event will take place in Room G44, Edith Morley Building

And please also note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

Lee Barber works for the BTO, coordinating structured ringing schemes including the Constant Effort Site Scheme (CES), Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) and the Winter Ringing Project. These schemes produce a wealth of information on how our British and Irish birds are fairing on an annual basis (see the BTO’s BirdFacts pages). Ringing is licensed and volunteers can train under the supervision of a ringing trainer, like Lee, to become a ringers themselves. The information generated from ringing is fascinating and shines a light on our best known species.

We will be meeting in person in Room G44, in the Edith Morley Building, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.

Note this event will take place in Room G44, Edith Morley Building

And please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

David has been a member of the BOC since the late 1970s and was chairman for a while.

He has travelled and birded for more than 50 years and has developed a preference for SE Asia and South America. In South America, Ecuador has become a favourite and he have visited there 5 times now. The talk covers their most recent trip in October 2023.

We will be meeting in person in Room G44, in the Edith Morley Building, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.

Note this event will take place in Room G44, Edith Morley Building

And please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

It’s Christmas social time again! Seasonal nibbles, a quiz and Sally Wearing has promised us one of her wonderful illustrated talks!

We will be meeting in person in Room G44, Edith Morley Building, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.

Please note – all our indoor meetings now start at 7.30 pm.

The AGM will be held first, followed by Paul Alistair Collins’ presentation.

After Paul’s very good talk on Lake Kerkini in Greece and the Svalbard, he is returning to give us a talk on the spectacular wildlife to be found just outside Panama City in the Soberania National Park. Lying at the centre of the New World, linking North and South America, a spectacular 970+ species of bird have been recorded in this small area, not to mention a mouthwatering variety of other wildlife such as howler monkeys and glass frogs!

We will be meeting in person in Room 109 in the Palmer Building as usual, but you can also join remotely via Zoom if you prefer.  Please click here to join the meeting. You can join from 7.15 pm and the meeting will start at 7.30 pm.  You will be muted when you join; please stay muted except when you have been asked to unmute, for recent sightings, questions, etc.