The British Ornithologists’ Club is delighted to congratulate Guy M. Kirwan, Editor of the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club since 2004, on receiving the 2026 Maria Koepcke Prize from the German Ornithological Society (Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft). The prestigious award recognises Guy’s outstanding contribution to ornithology and, in particular, his distinctive combination of field research, museum collections and taxonomic scholarship. The German Ornithological Society highlighted his work on the diversity and geographical variation of birds and […]

Collingwood Ingram (1880 – 1981) was a BOC member for 80 years, a record unlikely to be beaten. He joined at the age of 20 in 1901 and remained a member until he died aged 100. His first note in the BOC Bulletin, in 1901, reported a Scops Owl in Broadstairs; the last, in the same journal in 1981, put forward his view, later to be disproved, that Magpies were responsible for the decline in […]

The BOC Gavel Many years ago, while attending a BOC supper meeting at Imperial College, London, to give a talk on Cinereous Vultures in Mallorca, I was struck by the sight of a wonderful wooden artefact sitting on the table in front of the chairman. Curious, I picked it up and was even more surprised to see the object in detail. The gavel was presented to the BOC by Richard Meinertzhagen at the April 1951 […]

Herbert Stevens (1877-1964): F.Z.S., F.R.G.S.,M.S.P.F.(M.F.F.I.), M.B.O.C. Collector, Benefactor and Enigma. By Amberley Moore February 2023 At the meeting of the British Ornithologists’ Club on November 12 1924, a new Member, Herbert Stevens, was introduced by the Chairman – “Mr Stevens has been collecting birds and mammals in Tonkin (Vietnam) for the British Museum under the Salman Godman Fund.  Unfortunately, through the capsizing of a river steamer, Mr Stevens lost all his notes and photographs, and […]

No, not all of them, just the one for Cuba. It’s number 26 and I strongly advise you to buy it (the printed version, in English), although I may be biased, being one of the authors. Way back last century, in 1975, two of Cuba’s most distinguished ornithologists (and naturalists) wrote a Catálogo de las Aves de Cuba. I don’t think I really need to translate that. Although it was written in Spanish, all the […]

Published by the  British Ornithologists’ Club and John Beaufoy £25 hardback. October 2021. Why write about Willliam Yarrell? A more pertinent question would be “Why has Yarrell been forgotten?” While making very many contributions to natural history in the 1830-50s, his was a household name among naturalists. William Yarrell  (1784-1856) was very organised and lived his life in three separate compartments: his business, his publishing and his commitments to several major natural history societies. William […]