| Founded | 1 November 1929 (1929-11-01) |
|---|---|
| Founder | Horace Alexander |
| Type | Registered charity |
| Focus | Ornithology |
Area served | Staffordshire,Warwickshire,Worcestershire &West Midlands,England |
Key people | Bill Oddie (President) |
| Website | westmidlandbirdclub |
Formerly called | Birmingham Bird Club |
TheWest Midland Bird Club is theUK's largest regionalornithological society. It has been servingbirdwatchers and ornithologists in the fourEnglish counties ofStaffordshire,Warwickshire,Worcestershire and (since its separation from the aforesaid counties in 1974) the MetropolitanWest Midlands, with lectures, field trips, research, a bulletin and an annual report, since 1929. It is aregistered charity in England and Wales, number 213311.[1]
There are branches inKidderminster,Solihull, andStafford.[2]
It manages theBelvide Reservoir nature reserve in Staffordshire, theHarborne Reserve in Birmingham, and theLadywalk Reserve in North Warwickshire, as well as running an access-permit scheme forBlithfield Reservoir andGailey Reservoir in Staffordshire. The Club sponsors bird feeding stations atCannock Chase (Staffordshire) andDraycote Water (Warwickshire).
Bill Oddie has been the Club's president since 1999.
The Club was founded as theBirmingham Bird Club, by W. E. Groves and friends on 1 November 1929.[3] The name changed toBirmingham and District Bird Club in 1945, to The Birmingham and West Midland Bird Club in 1947, and the current name was adopted in 1959.[3]
It co-founded and still helps to manage theBardsey Bird and Field Observatory and was instrumental in securingBrandon Marsh as a nature reserve.[4]
A successfulWest Midland Bird Distribution Survey, published privately in 1951,[5] led to the club publishing the world's firstbird atlas,[6] theAtlas of breeding birds of the West Midlands, in 1970.[7]
Until 2010, the Club operated an information centre atKingsbury Water Park (Warwickshire).
Bill Oddie has been the Club's president since 1999. His first published article on birds appeared in the Club's 1962 Annual Report.[8] He is first credited in the 1956 report, in which reports of his bird observations are tagged with his initials "WEO".[9]
He discussed his membership of the Club in one of his first forays in the world of television natural history, as the subject of a Nature WatchSpecial: Bill Oddie - Bird Watcher, in which he was interviewed byJulian Pettifer, atBartley Reservoir and theChristopher Cadbury Wetland Reserve.[9]
Past and present
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| National | |
