Mobile Header

The 2023 Conference

Welsh Ornithological Society

The 2023 Annual Conference will be held in Aberystwyth (same location as 2022), on Saturday 4th November.  The conference theme is Into and out of the Red, focusing on bird status changes identified in Birds Of Conservation Concern Cymru 4.

The main speakers are Dawn Balmer (BTO and Chair of the RBBP which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year), Patrick Lindley (NRW), Julian Hughes (RSPB), who will talk about some success stories, Rachel Taylor (BTO) on the latest Curlew conservation research and Bob Haycock on the Pembrokeshire Rook survey. The final session of the day will be a panel discussion on the issues raised, involving the main speakers and chaired by WOS President, Iolo Williams.

There will be the usual selection of stalls, the WOS raffle and an excellent lunch.

The conference will open with coffee at 0930, and finish by 1700. The timings of the presentations have not been finalised yet and the full programme and speaker biographies will be posted on the WOS website as soon as they are ready.

The conference is being sponsored by BSG Ecology and Gower Ornithological Society and we are very grateful for their support and for the continued support of BTO Cymru and RSPB Cymru.

Booking is through Eventbrite – go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-2023-wos-conference-will-focus-on-red-listed-birds-and-success-stories-tickets-714508794037?aff=oddtdtcreator to book your tickets. Although costs have increased, we’ve tried to keep ticket prices as affordable as possible: WOS members will pay £30 and non-members £40. There are no discounted tickets for Young Birders. but WOS Young Birder members are encouraged to apply for WOS Young Conservationist Bursaries to help with the costs of tickets and transport.  

Video

Video (1)

The 2022 Conference

The 2022 Conference was held at Aberystwyth University on Saturday 5th November on the theme of “After Dark”.

Following Iolo Williams’s Presidential introduction – this year his concerns were directed at the Tory government’s environmental policies (or lack of them), rather than NRW – Ollie Padget started us off by seeking to persuade us through tracking evidence from Welsh Manx Shearwaters that they were the ultimate globetrotters, including wonderful video from a camera mounted on a Manxie skimming the waves. New technology also informed Rob Thomas’s presentation on elucidating the mysterious world of Storm Petrels after dark. Sean Sweeney gave the other morning presentation on the use of aerial technology to reduce bird casualties at offshore wind farms, concentrating on the huge new windfarms off the North Wales coast in Liverpool Bay.

The excellent lunch gave an extended opportunity for networking and meeting up with friends old and new, as no Lifetime Achievement or Student Research Awards were made this year. The afternoon started with the usual RSPB Cymru and BTO Cymru round-ups from Neil Lambert and Kelvin Jones:  This included BTO’s expanded monitoring responsibility for the UK’s wintering geese and swan populations in an exciting development of the Goose and Swan Monitoring Programme. Kelvin also spoke about BTO’s work as a partner in the ECHOES Project (Effect of climate change on bird habitats around the Irish Sea), which seeks to address how climate change will impact coastal bird habitats of the Irish Sea. BTO has been tracking wintering Curlews in Wales to increase our understanding of their preferred feeding habitats. 

Dan Rouse started the main afternoon’s programme with a heart-warming account of her work with community groups and young people on installing and monitoring owl boxes in south-west Wales and she was followed by the inimitable Tony Cross enthralling us with stories and results from nocturnal wader ringing across west Wales. This was followed by the tea break and raffle draw.

The final major presentation was given by the BTO’s Principal Data Scientist Simon Gillings on nocturnal bird migration (known to many as ‘nocmig‘) – recording and identifying the calls of migrating birds as they pass overhead at night.

Nocturnal migration is a common but often overlooked phenomenon – roughly 80% of our summer migrants are nocturnal migrants. Simon’s own work on nocturnal migration involves detecting species flying over his Cambridge garden at night, and collating this information; this allows him to examine the timing of migration for different species and add county records of under-recorded species. At the BTO, he works with the BTO Acoustic Pipeline project to leverage the automated processing of audio recordings and improve our ability to monitor cryptic birds, bats, small mammals and insects.

The whole day was a delight and was followed up by a small group visiting Ynyslas and Ynys Hir on Sunday morning, stopping off on the way to clock the two Black Redstarts which Arfon Williams found for us near Aberystwyth pier. It was so good to meet up face to face after three years of waiting.

Video taken at the Conference will be available on the WOS YouTube channel shortly.

Over £400 was raised by the raffle and book sales, which will contribute to our 2023 Small Grants Scheme, Student Research Award and the WOS Young Conservationist Bursaries.

30th Anniversary of WOS

The 2019 Conference  celebrated the 30th Anniversary of WOS and was held at the Penglais Campus at Aberystwyth University on Saturday 16 November 2019. A report of the Conference highlights is available here.

Because of the COVID pandemic, the 2020 Conference did not take place.

Search Website