Cambridgeshire Bird Club
Welcome to the club
The Cambridgeshire Bird Club promotes the study, recording and conservation of birds in Cambridgeshire and encourages a wider interest in natural history and the protection of county wildlife habitats.
We record the County's birds in our Annual Report, so we need your records. We have a stunning Gallery, so we need your photos. We do research, we have indoor and outdoor meetings, and we keep you informed with our regular emailed and online bulletins. We have links to active bird ringing groups. And have a look at our Facebook page.
You can see What's About? and we urge you to report interesting, sensitive or confidential sightings to the County Recorder.
We hope you enjoy your visit and come back soon.
Announcements
New Checklist order for 2019 records spreadsheet
In February 2019, the BOU brought in a new checklist order. Our records spreadsheet has been changed accordingly.
For those of you who do direct records submissions to the Cambridgeshire Bird Club, could you please use our revised 2019 spreadsheet from now on. (All earlier 2019 records will be converted for you, which is also true for BirdTrack records)...... More details here
The new order will be adopted from the 2018 report.
OSME's annual Summer Meeting will be held on Saturday 29 June, BTO Headquarters, Thetford.
Open to all - and free! In keeping with OSME's commitment to supporting conservation, the theme of this year's Meeting is 'Conservation in the OSME Region' and all proceeds from the raffle will go to their conservation fund. Talks range from Birding in Kazakhstan to Diurnal wildlife at a wadi pool in northern Oman.
Further details at http://www.osme.org/content/osme-summer-meeting-and-41st-agm
County peak bird counts and earliest / latest dates: updated by Mark Hawkes, view it here
County garden lists: Updated for 2019 by Mark Hawkes, view it here
Club meetings
Club summer outdoor trips
- Details of our summer outdoor trips can be found on our Meetings page. Please note that due to popular demand some trips may need to be booked early to avoid disappointment. The usual start time is 7.00 pm
12 July: Fowlmere Nature Reserve.
A habitat-rich site on former watercress beds with chalk-fed springs and stream, reedbeds, fen, open water, chalk grassland, woodland and scrub all set within a 41 ha SSSI. Starts at 7.00 pm.
9 August: The Middle Level Catchment
A chance to see the biodiversity conservation work of the Middle Level with a trip around the extensive waterways of these fenland ditches, drains and rivers and one of the UK’s strongholds for water voles.
Early booking advisable
More on meetings here
BTO Cambridgeshire Spotted Flycatcher Geolocator Project
We are continuing the survey of Spotted Flycatchers into 2019. This is the perfect activity for bored birders during those long summer evenings until the start of the autumn passage in late July.
Do you know of a pair nesting near you this year? We want to hear from anyone who sees flycatchers after mid-May, or knows of a current or recent site.
For more information on the Project and what we've found out so far go to http://cambridgeshirebirdringing.org/spofl-menu/
And please send in every record from now until October to spofl@cambridgebirdclub.org.uk
BTO Urban Breeding Gulls Survey 2019
Last summer we successfully contributed to the Cambridgeshire component of the UK breeding seabirds census. This year, there is an add-on project specifically to survey urban breeding gulls
You can chose from randomly-picked urban 1km squares across all the towns in the county - two visits are all you need to do.
If you are interested, please email Louise Bacon, county recorder, with an indication of which part of Cambridgeshire / Peterborough you would prefer. The survey starts soon so please respond now if you if you want to be involved.
Photo of the year: 2018
Congratulations to Neil Bramwell for winning the Photo of the Year competition with his photo of a Hawfinch. In second place was Nigel Sprowell's Spotted Flycatcher, and in third place was a Peregrine Falcon by Simon Stirrup. View here to see all three, and click here to see the photos entered.
Picture of the month: May
Common Tern, Fen Drayton Lakes, 7th May 2019
© David Ball
Doug Radford has made the selection for May.
It's always a privilege to be asked to assess the photos in the Bird Club gallery. There's always lots of great portraits to choose from, but this time I decided to look for something different to the variations on a 'bird on a stick', and I've chosen David Ball's Common Tern as it skimmed over a pool at Fen Drayton. I love terns, and David has captured perfectly the elegant grace of the bird as it delicately picked something from the surface of the water. Wonderful!
e-Bulletins
- Our e-Bulletin for March 2019 is available for reading. Click here to view
Annual General Meeting 2019
The 2019 Annual General Meeting of the Cambridgeshire Bird Club was held in the Tony Cooper Suite, Cottenham Village College at 7.45 pm on Friday 8th March. To view the Agenda, click here, and for the Minutes of the 2018 AGM click here. The audited and signed Financial Statement for 2018 can be viewed here.