Recordings of Indoor Meetings
Since October 2020, we have been recording all our indoor meetings and making the recordings available to our members. Some of the speakers have kindly allowed us to make the videos public. These videos are listed below, with links to them on Youtube. We hope you enjoy them!
Vulture Conservation, by Campbell Murn. Our annual joint lecture with the University of Reading. Campbell is Head of Conservation and Research at the Hawk Conservancy Trust. He focuses on some of the critically endangered species in South Asia, including why they have catastrophically declined and the conservation efforts being made to try to aid their recovery, then describes how the African protected network is used to estimate global populations, based on a case study of White-headed Vultures.
Our African Migrants, by Will Cresswell. What happens to our summer birds when they are not with us? In this enlightening talk, Will considers some of the challenges that our migrants face when they migrate to winter in Africa. He shares some recent discoveries that allow us to understand why migrant birds are declining and what we might be able to do about the declines. Will is a Professor of Biology at St Andrews University and has been studying the ecology of migrant birds for over 25 years.
BOC’s 75th Anniversary Celebrations. The BOC started as the Reading Ornithological Club in 1947 and is still going strong in 2022. This recording of our ‘birthday’ celebration includes two main talks: “The Birds of Berkshire: Mapping and Writing up the County’s Birds” by Neil Bucknell, the history of local reporting and monitoring in two books, and “Berkshire’s Birdscapes 1947-2022” by Renton Righelato, how Berkshire’s landscapes have changed and what has happened to the country’s breeding birds during the last 75 years.
Otmoor: A Wetland Rediscovered, by David Wilding. In this talk, David describes the fascinating history of Otmoor, explaining how arable fields were turned into an incredible wetland oasis, now home to breeding Bitterns, Marsh Harriers, Cranes and Snipe. He also takes a journey through the seasons, looking at the wildlife and the work that is done to maintain this amazing place. David is the Site Manager at Otmoor, having worked there for the last 17 years.
Conservation of Birds that Cross Continents and Cultures, by Juliet Vickery. For many of our migrant species, life is getting tougher, resulting in long term declines in numbers. In this talk, Juliet focuses on one species, the Wood Warbler, to illustrate the challenges of understanding what causes these declines. She describes the results of work on their breeding grounds in the UK and their wintering and staging grounds in sub-Saharan West Africa, and how these results could inform future actions to address the decline of long-distance travellers. She is CEO of the British Trust for Ornithology.
Photographic Competitions. We hold an annual photographic competition for our members. Recordings of the last three competitions are available online via these links: 2020, 2021 and 2022. Each of them shows all the submitted photos, with the judges’ deliberations and markings, plus, of course, the winners and runners-up. They all offer a real feast of wonderful bird photos, which we hope you will enjoy!
If you are a member of the BOC and you want to view any of the other recordings of our meetings, please contact Sally Wearing via sallywearing@berksoc.org.uk or Iain Oldcorn via membership@berksoc.co.uk.