Wednesday 29th November 2017

After the Annual General Meeting the evening will belong to Mike Lane, a wildlife photographer who has visited many times before with his A Lane in…’ series.

This is a talk about the new and little known Heart of England Forest in Warwickshire where Mike has spent the last few years extensively photographing the wildlife. It is a new forest with many young trees, but also some well established mature woodland, lakes, rivers and shallow scrapes. In an exciting Midlands habitat, Mike has been working with his favourite subjects, British wildlife.

image:  Blackcap (Mike Lane) 

Wednesday 15th November, 2017

The evening will consist of three shorter presentations by BOC members.

Chairman, Mike Turton talks about his other great interest, dragonflies and damselflies, which can provide some pretty spectacular sights in their adult forms, but their earlier manifestations are often little known.

Renton Righelato now looks after the conservation side of the club, so he will update us on conservation matters locally. It isn’t just a matter of a bit of pruning and digging: there are battles to be fought on behalf of beleaguered wildlife.

David and Nancy Massie travel widely and usually return with some wonderful photographic memories: this time they will take us to see some of the wildlife of Spitzbergen.

image: Broad-bodied Chaser

Wednesday 18th October 2017

Tim will speak about his findings during 44 years of research on Skomer, when he studied guillemots closely. Some of that research informs his 2016 publishing success, ‘The Most Perfect Thing’, an informative and entertaining volume devoted to birds’ eggs.  Those familiar with his other writings, such as ‘Bird Sense’ and ‘Ten Thousand Birds’ will know that Tim has the knack of making the science very accessible.

 image: the bridled form of the Guillemot

Wednesday 4th October  2017

Swift numbers have fallen by 47% in recent years because they are losing tens of thousands of nesting places across the country. Jan Stannard  became an eco-warrior on their behalf in 2015 and has been very active in founding the Maidenhead, Marlow and Cookham Swift Group which now has nearly 100 supporters: together they achieved a world record for the biggest number of new swift nesting places in a single year in the locality. Jan will talk about what can be done to persuade architects and builders to provide solutions.