Cambridgeshire Bird Club
CORONAVIRUS - Please uphold the reputation of our Bird Club by adhering to the latest Government policy and advice on all birding activities away from home.
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 want your photos. We have field projects, we have indoor meetings and trips, and we keep you informed with our monthly emailed and 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.
If you are unsure of the location of the less well-known birding sites, check our Gazetteer
Announcements
- Our gallery will no longer show site information for each picture while the Covid-19 crisis continues. See more.
- Please, only take part in our bird surveys if you can diligently follow the Government's policy on Coronavirus.
- With regret, because of Coronavirus, we have cancelled the April and May indoor meetings and the May field trip.
- The Photo of the Year 2020 is David Ball's Common Tern. Congratulations to David.
- The January Club e-Bulletin is now available to non members - records, photos, articles and event reminders . Read here.
- The 2019/20 Winter Garden Bird Survey - We would like your records sent in now. What to do next,
- The Summer Garden Bird Survey started on 8th March. Please join in - it's not too late - the details are here
- A Cambridgeshire Woodland Bird Survey has just commenced. To be involved, read here.
- Make a note in your diary of the the dates of our summer fields trips: (22nd May - cancelled), 10th July and 14th August - see Meetings
- The picture of the month (February) is Garth Peacock's Stonechat
Cambridgeshire Bird Club Woodland Bird Survey 2020
In 2003 the Club carried out a survey of woodland birds focusing especially on the scarce and declining species such as Marsh Tit and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. It's time to do this again, covering as many woodlands as possible across the county with three monthly visits, with the aim to list species and numbers of territories.
For more information and how to sign up to your own woodland site please click here.
Cambridgeshire Bird Club Summer Garden Bird Survey 2020
If you have a garden in this area and you like to watch the birds in your garden, we would like to invite you to take part in the Cambridgeshire Bird Club Summer Garden Bird Survey 2020.
We ask that you note the bird species feeding or foraging in your garden from Sunday 8th March – Saturday 3rd October. We will discover which species of birds make most use of gardens in the county during the summer months, find out whether new species are coming into gardens and whether the regular species are making less use of the gardens.
Cambridgeshire Bird Club Winter Garden Bird Survey 2019/20
Many thanks to everyone who took in this survey. Many records are now in, please send any remaining records now: gardenbirds@cambridgebirdclub.org.uk. Read more here.
Club meetings
- Details of our indoor meetings and summer outdoor trips can be found on our Meetings page.
3rd April: ‘All the space in the world: how rewilding our lands can save Britain’s birds’ by Ben Macdonald
Note that the meeting is one week earlier than usual
Tony Cooper Suite, Cottenham Village College, CB24 8UA. 7.30pm for 8pm start
Britain is blessed with space. Huge areas of this space produce little in the way of viable food supplies. They sustain few livelihoods, and no young people’s futures. We waste space in a way no other nation would allow. The solution is simple: the restoration of our native landscapes, our wildlife - and most of all, our rural jobs. Nature makes money, creates genuine local income, and affords the prospect of a life without subsidy for our dying rural communities.
Rebirding was written as the first book with actual solutions for how beautiful and profitable the UK’s countryside could one day look - as well as why the impending extinction of our cuckoos, turtle doves and honey-bees is entirely avoidable. Britain has all the space it needs for an epic wildlife recovery. So what’s stopping it from happening in our country – and how can we turn things around?
Ben Macdonald is a conservation writer, field director in wildlife television, and naturalist, passionate about restoring Britain's wildlife, pelicans very much included, in his lifetime. In television, he has worked on projects for the BBC, ITV, Netflix and Apple, including the Emmy-winning Our Planet series for Netflix, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. Ben's first book has been nominated for the Richard Jefferies Nature Prize.
More on club meetings here
1st May: ‘The fascinating cognitive abilities of corvids’ by Claudia Wascher
Tony Cooper Suite, Cottenham Village College, CB24 8UA. 7.30pm for 8pm start
A corvid is a member of the passerine bird family Corvidae, which includes crows, magpies, ravens, jays, and choughs. Corvids are distributed worldwide and inhabit harsh environments such as mountainous regions, but also thrive in urban areas. Corvids are of broad significance for behavioural and ornithological research not only because of their ability to adapt to diverse habitats and live in complex societies, but also because of their remarkable cognitive skills. In this talk, Claudia Wascher will give an overview over recent findings of cognition research in different corvid species and will discuss what we can learn about the evolution of cognition from corvids.
Claudia, is a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, experienced in social cognition and physiology, interested in the evolution of cooperation as well as costs and benefits of social behaviour. Claudia conducted her PhD investigating social modulation of heart rate in greylag geese at the Konrad-Lorenz research station in Austria. After her PhD she broadened her expertise in the field of social cognition, investigating cognitive mechanisms underlying cooperation in carrion crows and ravens.
Photo of the year: 2019
Congratulations to David Ball for winning the 2019 Photo of the Year competition with his photo of this Common Tern. There was a tie for second place, so in no particular order they were Garth Peacock's fighting Coots and David Banasiak's Short-eared Owl. Click here to view all three, and click here to see all the photos that had been entered.
Picture of the month: February
Stonechat
© Garth Peacock, Fen Drayton Lakes RSPB, 26th February 2020.
This month, Nigel Sprowell chose the Picture of the month.
“Considering the appalling weather in February, photographers need to be applauded for producing some excellent images which made it very hard to single out the best . There were some very fine photos of Greater White-fronted Goose, especially from Roger Orbell and Matthew Mellor and I particularly liked Roger Cresswell’s detailed Water Rail. James Hanlon’s excellent portrait of a female Kestrel nearly took my vote, but after much deliberation, the nicely composed , beautifully detailed and pin sharp image of a female Stonechat by Garth Peacock won the day.”
Recent annual Cambridgeshire Bird Reports
- The Cambridgeshire Bird Report 2018 No. 92 has been published. Copies can be purchased from the Club - see here
- The Cambridgeshire Bird Report 2017 (No. 91) is now available to read online - click here for CBR 2017 or go to Bird Reports
CBC Spotted Flycatcher research 2015-19, linked to the BTO's geolocator project
Michael Holdsworth's excellent study on Spotted Flycatchers can be read at http://bit.ly/SpotFly