<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Lancaster and District Birdwatching Society Newsletter BTO CONFERENCE
Newsletter of the Lancaster and District Birdwatching Society
BTO CONFERENCE
5-7 December 2003
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Half a dozen LDBWS  members made the annual pilgrimage to Swanwick in Derbyshire to enjoy the talks, the displays and the sociability of bird studiers from all over UK. The highlight as usual among the talks was The Witherby Lecture which this year was by David Bryant on the swallow family.

All of them live a high-energy lifestyle mostly fuelled by catching flying insects (though some like the N. America Tree Swallow can survive on berries when they first arrive back in spring). Their fairly unusual capabilities with mud building and their variety of breeding games; with extra-pair fertilisations, intra-specific brood parasitism and quasi-parasitism (where the male of a pair also fertilises a second female and allows her egg in the nest with those of his first mate) were presented. Experiments showed that the long tail streamers of top males were a liability when feeding but a real turn-on for females choosing a mate. But no answer to why House Martins have hairy legs. Among the splendid pictures of swallows was a Sparrowhawk going into a building and taking a brood of Barn Swallows from the nest. It is a highly migratory family and some of their exploits over deserts, seas and mountains were covered.

The talk on Swifts by Edward Mayer was less biological. He was showing the drastic effect both of modern buildings and restoration of old buildings on the nest sites for Swifts and presented options for Swift-friendly architecture. See website londons-swifts.org.uk for more information.

'What else can you do with Nest-boxes' was a stimulating talk by Chris du Feu on the benefits to the birds and to the ornithologists studying them and also to the people interested in fleas. The numbers of fleas involved are amazing and of course this led on to the importance of cleaning boxes after use.

A talk with the boring title of 'The development and uses of atlases' by David Gibbons turned out to be a fascinating review of population and conservation issues from all over the world that had been illuminated by the systematic data collected in atlases. For example the Bateleur Eagle in southern Africa whose distribution stopped abruptly at the border with South Africa as the land management practice changed.

Seabirds and Oilspills by Mark Grantham pulled together information from the major shipping accidents around Europe, the ringed birds recovered and the totals involved. When the Prestige sunk off Spain in November most bird were immatures from west coast UK colonies but when the car transporter sunk in the eastern English Channel in January it affected adults from the east coast colonies. 

The other subjects covered were Garden Birds (but as Mike Toms is coming to talk in September I won't steal his thunder), Bramblings, Sand Martins and the Sahel, Ringing and the valuable information, especially on less common birds that can be deduced from observatory daily logs. Birdwatching reminiscences from Bob Scott were too entertaining for me to take notes!

Dave Soutar had put up an excellent poster presentation on Twite and other notable ones were on Greenshanks.

As usual it was nice to meet up with people who have spoken to us in the past like Dennis Summers-Smith and Dawn Balmer in the breaks and enjoy the excellent food at Swanwick.

The final talk at the conference from Jeremy Greenwood was an inspiring call to continue to gather the data vital for biodiversity actions and to do our bit to look after the world.

The theme of the conference was to look at the things that Chris Mead (who died in 2003) was passionate about and it was certainly a fitting tribute to a big man in every way.         




Birdtours.co.uk
Worldbirder.com
Local Sightings
LDBWS Website
Newsletter Index