The Lincolnshire Bird Club

I did my talk on rare Lincs breeding birds at the LNU meeting at Whisby this afternoon and enjoyed doing it. Thank you to all who attended and the generous feedback.

The talk wouldn't have been possible without the help of all who submit records to LBC, those who helped with the atlas and regular BBSers, so thank you to you too.

And thank you to all the photographers who publish photos in the LBC album which I shamelessly pinched to use in my talk. These were photos from John Clarkson, Graham Catley, Garry Wright, Don Davis, Russ Tefler, Russel Hayes, Trevor Gunby, Steve Nesbitt, Dave Bradbeer, Mick Widdowson, Paul Neale, Anthony Bentley, Mick West, David Morison and Roy Harvey.

I have never spent so much time going through the LBC album as I have done this week and is is a fine body of work with many fantastic portraits. A couple of interesting points though. There was no photo of a Lincolnshire Corncrake or Goshawk. There were few breeding related photos e.g. pairs of birds, display behaviour and adults with young. So my challenge to you all is to get some shots to fill these gaps and post them through the summer. I appreciate that I am talking about rare breeding birds here and I do not want to encourage anyone to visit and disturb nests but hopefully there are plenty of opportunities from the hides on RSPB and LWT nature reserves to get interesting pics without interfering with breeding.

Thank you Phil, for an excellent afternoon, it was a superb talk/presentation, extremely insightful and educational. I will be certain to let you know if I were to be fortunate enough to take pictures of rare breeding birds!

Best regards,

Ben.

It might just be worth mentioning for the record that goshawk and corncrake are on Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, meaning they are afforded special protection, so if there is the possibility of any disturbance to potential breeding birds in the interests of photography (or any other activity) you'll need to obtain a licence from Natural England.

John

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Contact: recorder_south@lincsbirdclub.co.uk

Hi John Thanks for clarifying that. As it's the best part of 100 years since Corncrakes nested in Lincs and Goshawks have never been confirmed to breed I suspect no one will be rushing out for licences. You are right to point out that if there was any sniff of breeding there should be no disturbance at all near a nest site or a suspected one by anyone.

I meant any photo of either in Lincs would be good, most likely a migrant.