40 Years On

Spent a good part of today designing and printing Christmas cards. This evening we went to the monthly meeting of the Sheffield Bird Study Group. Not only was it the glass of wine and a mince pie session but it also marked the 40th anniversary of the founding of the group. The speaker was a recorder for a significant period of the group's existence, and as someone who is new to birding, it was interesting to hear about what it was like before the days of pagers and tinternet etc. Nowadays birders can find out within minutes when and where a bird has been sighted but back then, sometimes they couldn't even access photos of some of the rarer birds. I've been doing a spot of twitching myself over the last few weeks, but for some of these guys, it's a way of life. For some it's a competitive sport but for many it's a branch of citizen science that shows the ups and downs of bird populations in the area over the years. What was once commonplace is now rare and vice versa.
The image is of the latest annual report, a splendid publication which takes a lot of work to put together. The 2011 report is ahead of schedule and is full of great information as well as photos and drawings .