Welcome to the British Ornithologists’ Club

What we do

We are passionate about educating the public in the UK and world-wide in all things ornithological including avian systematics, taxonomy and species distributions. We provide a platform for the publication of open-access scientific information, via the Bulletin, as well as hosting discussions on key ornithological issues.


Publications

In 2020 we published, in the Checklist series, The Birds of Cuba. It is obvious, we think, that such a book should be available in Spanish, the language of Cuba, for the benefit (and pleasure) of all of its population, as well as many people in the wider Caribbean and South American region. For this reason, it’s a pleasure to make this available in an accessible PDF format. The essential parts of the text was translated by two of the original authors, Andy Mitchell and Arturo Kirkconnell and proofed by Nathaly O’Farrill.  The translated version is available here.

Bulletin

The BOC produces a Bulletin four times a year in an open access online format available for viewing and downloading at BioOne. The list of the table of contents of each issue is available at the Bulletin Index page where you will also find the contents from earlier issue. These are available to view on the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) website.

The BOC Bulletin is available for viewing or download. You can view the table of contents, abstracts and references, full text or downloadable PDFs of individual papers as well as the complete issue at the BioOne Complete website.


Meetings

Our next meeting will be held on 25th November 2024 in the Barley Mow. Utku Perktaş will present his talk: Unveiling Diversity: Phylogeography, Species Limits, and Evolutionary History of Turacos (Aves: Musophagidae). More information is available here.

Blog

We publish blog posts which tell the stories of papers published in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club and look at pertinent issues in ornithology. We have also started a series of blogs which document the biographies of the founders of The BOC. The May Founding Father will be Howard Saunders, merchant banker and ‘already by 1892 author of the hugely influential An illustrated manual of British birds, an authority on the Laridae and an enthusiastic committee man…’ Robert Prys -Jones BBOC 144(1)’

Read the latest blog posts here: