​Speaker: Steve Stansfield
Reporter: Sue Gale

Steve Stansfield lives in Norfolk for the winter, but since 1998 he has lived and worked on Bardsey Island (Enlli) for the rest of each year. He is now Director of Operations and works closely with Bangor University to study the Manx Shearwaters. He started his talk with a recording of the wonderful cries of tens of thousands of Manxies, which happen all night every night from March to September. Such an evocative way to start a talk, even if it did leave us wondering how anyone got any sleep. On a clear night it would obviously be a pleasure to be awake – Bardsey is now an International Dark Sky Sanctuary, the only place in Europe to boast such a designation. It would be worth a visit just to see the Milky Way on all its glory.

We now have the final results of the January Bird count and I thought it might be
interesting to draw together the results of the last few Bird counts since we re-started
after Covid.

Year                                                                    2023          2024       2025
Number of teams                                                 5                15            10
Number of people counting                                11                35           27
Winning team total number of species              88               81           77
Total number of species recorded                      93              96           92
Total number of records                                                        850        577

​Speaker: Nick Acheson
Reporter: Sue Gale

Nick Acheson is an old friend of WVBS, and we know we can rely on him to give an entertaining talk that is crammed full of information. As usual we were not disappointed, and we all know an awful lot more about Bolivia than we did before! Nick went to Bolivia in 1997, intending to stay for a few months but effectively stayed for 10 years. He knew nothing about the
country before he went but found it to be at the meeting point of 4 out of the 5 major regions of South America, meaning that it offered a wide variety of habitats and therefore also of species. To the East of the country the land is low-lying but even here there are differences, with woodlands and savannahs, whereas to the West are the Andes, with their valleys and at the furthest west the high altiplano. Nick lived in Santa Cruz, pretty much right in the middle.

Speaker: Neil Calbrade
Reporter: Cath Robinson
Neil has been working for the BTO for many years and is the Waterbirds Surveys Officer. These surveys cover : WeBS and also the Goose and Swan Monitoring Programme: GSMP. The BTO does love its acronyms....

Speaker: Colin Smith
Reporter: Sue Gale

For Colin Smith the main attraction of a visit to the Carpathian Mountains in Romania is the chance to see European Brown Bears. And he wasn’t disappointed. From a hide set up by local people no fewer than 8 Brown Bears came to the bait. Colin had wonderful views and photos of the bears, including of one very nervous female with her cubs. A fox that was missing its tail also showed up. The mountains of Romania are also home to Wolves and Lynx, but these were not part of this trip. Colin did see Spotted Nutcrackers in the pines, and Red-
backed Shrikes, along with a tiny Yellow-belted Toad.