Speaker: Abi Mustard
Reporter: Sue Gale
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Abi is the leader of this project, which aims to firmly re-establish the Osprey as a breeding bird in central England. The Osprey is our third largest bird of prey with a wingspan of 1.4 to 1.8 meters. The females are largest, and it is possible to distinguish chicks in the nest on the basis of size only. In the UK 2 or 3, occasionally even 4, eggs are laid, the current pair at Rutland being exceptionally
efficient in rearing 4 chicks each year. Ospreys are exclusively fish eaters and are adapted to do so. They can rotate an outer talon to give a better grip on the slippery prey. They also have excellent eye-sight, and especially strong wing muscles so that they can rise from the water while holding their prey.

Speaker: Paul Stancliffe
Reporter: Sue Gale

Paul addressed us via Zoom (and without the glass of red wine he usually has when on a Zoom meeting!) to try to persuade us that we can all play an important part in the work of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Volunteers are the lifeblood of the organisation, and some 60,000 of them submit data about their sightings. They allow the BTO to spot trends that would otherwise go un-noticed, like the crash in the population of Chaffinches over the last 5 years.

Speaker: Allan Hale
Reporter: Sue Gale
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It has become a tradition at WVBS that the AGM means a talk from Allan Hale, telling us about one of his exotic trips abroad. Indeed, I don’t know how we would manage the AGM without him, as he also acts as our returning officer. So he was in charge during the business of the meeting, at which the committee was re-elected with the addition of a new Minutes Secretary, Cath R. And still in charge immediately afterwards as he told us not to mute ourselves so that we would be free to interrupt or even heckle whenever we wished. I’m not sure we made much use of that privilege
but clearly Allan enjoys the interaction with members during his presentations and didn’t want to lose that.

Speaker: Nick Acheson
Reporter: Sue Gale

There was so much information packed in to the one and a bit hours of this riveting Zoom presentation that it is pretty much impossible to summarise. What can I leave out? Nick took us at breakneck speed through the 7 main landscape types found in Norfolk, telling us something of their history and evolution as well as describing the types of flora and fauna associated with each. And one of the 7 was subdivided into 3!

Speaker: Dr Dave Horsley
Reporter: Sue Gale

Dave is a fan of birding in the Spanish Steppes, parts of Spain close to the Portuguese border and very much inland. They are between 600-900 metres above sea level, so the numbers of large raptors that we often associate with mountains are not too surprising. Also, some of the passerines like the lovely Rock Bunting he showed us. The Southern Steppes identified by Dave were in Extremadura, and many of the areas were familiar to those club members who travelled to Spain in 2019, bringing back happy memories.