Welcome to the latest HOC News

NEXT HOC FIELD MEETING

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:13:29 +0000

Wednesday 24th February 2010
THE FOREST OF DEAN

full details, maps & directions ....

HOC INDOOR MEETING

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:35:26 +0000

Thursday 11th February 2010
THE DR WALKER MEMORIAL LECTURE :
"THE COMPLETE OWL"
An illustrated talk by
MICHAEL LEACH

in association with
Herefordshire Nature Trust

full details, maps & directions ....

TREECREEPER GALLERY ADDED TO THE HOC WEBSITE

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 15:07:40 +0100

A new Treecreeper Gallery has been added today to the HOC main Website. All of the pictures were taken in Herefordshire.

Click below to go to the
Gallery Home Page :

Gallery Home Page

HOC CUCKOO, SWIFT & HOUSE MARTIN SURVEY GOES LIVE

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:45:34 +0000

Our Online Survey enables you to record your sightings of seven key Herefordshire species. Submit your records online of : Barn Owl, Tree Sparrow, Bullfinch, Song Thrush, House Martin, Cuckoo & Swift.

This new HOC Community Project is supported by a Lottery Grant from Awards for All. There are some superb online tools for mapping, finding Tetrads and finding Grid References. The new
Get-a-Map pages ( including a tutorial ) are accessible from the Survey Pages.

The Barn Owl, Bullfinch, Tree Sparrow & Song Thrush surveys went live in the Autumn and the Club has received a great number of valuable
records - all with 6 figure grid references.

With House Martins, Cuckoos and Swifts due in the next days and weeks, please make this HOC Community Project a huge success by spreading
the word as widely as possible and encouraging everyone to send in their records !!!

Survey Pages

Get-a-Map™

NEW SITE MAP ADDED TO THE HOC WEBSITE

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:20:41 +0000

A brand new site-map has been added
to the HOC Website. This is a clear and brilliant tool for finding your way around our ever-expanding Website and finding things you didn't even know were there !

Click the button below to go to the Site Map :

Site Map

HOC LOTTERY AWARD CELEBRATION

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:09:19 +0000

Herefordshire Ornithological Club has received a generous grant of £7,661 from the “Awards for All” division of the National Lottery.

“Awards for All” ( England ) is supported by the Arts Council England, the Big Lottery Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund and Sport England. It awards grants of between £300 and £10,000 for people to take part in art, sport, heritage and community activities, and projects that promote education, the environment and health in the local community.
The Member of Parliament for Leominster, Bill Wiggin, who is shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, was the principal guest at an event hosted by Herefordshire Ornithological Club at Queenswood Country Park on Friday, November 7 to celebrate the generous award to the HOC and to mark the start of the second full year of the Winter & Breeding Bird Atlas Survey 2007-2011.
Nick Smith, Chairman of Herefordshire Ornithological Club, said: “The event also included a short walk around the country park and I would like to thank Herefordshire Council for their support and letting us hold the event at Queenswood.”
Herefordshire Winter & Breeding Bird Atlas Survey
Every twenty years or so, the British Trust for Ornithology ( BTO ), together with its partners Birdwatch Ireland and the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club produce an Atlas of British breeding and wintering birds.
These are very important publications: as well as being of general and scientific interest, they help inform agricultural and conservation policy. The last breeding Atlas highlighted the huge decline in many farmland species such as Tree Sparrow and Barn Owl - showing the extent to which their breeding ranges had contracted.
The next Atlas will cover the period 2007-2011 and will include both breeding and wintering birds. The first winters fieldwork started in November 2007, with the first breeding survey season having been completed this summer 2008.
We are now beginning the second year ( November ) of this four / five year project. What will the new Atlas tell us - and will the decline of farmland birds have stopped? What will the new maps look like for expanding species such as Buzzard and Little Egret?
Locally, the Herefordshire Ornithological Committee has decided to take the opportunity to produce a more detailed Winter & Breeding Atlas that started in the November 2007. This will be the first ever-full tetrad coverage of some 550 - 2 km x 2 km squares ( tetrads ) across our own County.
Amazingly, these authoritative Atlases are based on the observations of thousands of volunteers walking around a patch of land; observing and in some cases counting the birds they see. To help organise fieldwork across this county, there is a network of 10km Square Co-ordinators with local knowledge of their area.
Therefore, the search is on for volunteers to contribute to this huge project within the county. We will need a large number of observers to carry out this fieldwork – a great opportunity to do some enjoyable birdwatching and contribute to an important County and National Project.
‘Awards for All’ Lottery Grant
The award was given to Herefordshire Ornithological Club (HOC) partially as a result of the County-wide survey being linked to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) survey of all winter & breeding bird species over the next 4/5 years. The grant sum awarded was £7,661. The HOC has contributed an additional £2,000 from its own funds to improving the Club’s website and other display and projection equipment.
The HOC wants the project to encourage awareness of the birdlife within the County through this field survey to run during the entire four to five years.
Awareness and educational information, in the form of displays, illustrated talks and field events, will be given by the Club's Education Committee and volunteers. This will hopefully yield enough helpers, public and other County organisations to join in a linked and combined effort to discover what Winter and breeding birds we have gained or have lost.
The HOC website will be two-way, permitting the input of records photographs and and the use of those records in the Atlas project and the Club’s Annual Reports.
More local walks will be organised County-wide to enable anyone and everyone to take part in a field survey event.
The HOC Garden Birdwatch scheme will be promulgated more widely - to incorporate the voluntary work of people who, for whatever reason, are unable to accompany their fellows on field events.
Skilled and experienced Club members will endeavour to raise the level of bird recognition, both visual and aural, of anyone who wishes to take part in any of the Club activities. Members and non-members will be invited to assist towards the first ever Bird Atlas for Herefordshire.
HOC website is http://www.herefordshirebirds.org

NEW HEREFORDSHIRE BIRD SURVEY PAGES ADDED TO THE HOC WEBSITE

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:02:42 +0000

Our new Online Survey enables you to record your sightings of seven key Herefordshire species. Submit your records online of : Barn Owl, Tree Sparrow, Bullfinch, Song Thrush, House Martin, Cuckoo & Swift.

This brand new HOC Community Project is supported by a Lottery Grant from Awards for All. There are some superb online tools for mapping, finding Tetrads and finding Grid References. The new Get-a-Map pages ( including a tutorial ) are accessible from the Survey Pages.

Survey Pages

Get-a-Map™

NEW ATLAS PAGE ADDED TO THE HOC WEBSITE

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:20:37 +0000

We recently added a completely new Atlas Page which is very comprehensive and is full of helpful tips and advice. There are some superb online tools for mapping, finding Tetrads and finding
Grid References.

The new Get-a-Map pages
( including a tutorial ) are accessible
from the Atlas Page.
Atlas
Get-a-Map™

FIVE SUPERB NEW GALLERIES ADDED TO THE HOC WEBSITE

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:40:57 +0000

Five superb new image galleries have been added to the HOC Website. The species included are White Stork, Redstart, Turtle Dove ( 2 Galleries ) and Mandarin Duck. Especial thanks are due to George Ewart for some quite magnificent images. All of the pictures were taken in Herefordshire.

Click below to go to the
Gallery Home Page :

Gallery Home Page

HOC WEBSITE HELP SECTION GREATLY EXTENDED :

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 12:28:46 +0000

The help pages are now very comprehensive indeed with new help sections and a tutorial on using Atlas tools such as the Ordnance Survey’s fantastic Get-a-Map online facility.
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