This review first appeared in ‘British Birds’ issue 99 (page 332), in June 2006. Links have been added for your convenience.
Website of the month
The West Midland Bird Club is a county bird club that covers not one but four counties: Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and. the metropolitan county of the West Midlands. The club is one of the oldest in the country. It was formed in 1929 by a handful of pioneers as the Birmingham Bird Club; in 2006 the WMBC has nearly 2,000 members. For a bird club of this size, the website www.westmidlandbirdclub.com is of a corresponding scale. It has comprehensive sections on where to watch birds in all four counties, all four county lists (up to the end of 2003) and a fascinating archive of articles from county reports dating back to 1934. There is no 'recent sightings' section on the website but the club offers a bespoke hotline service run by club member Eric Clare from his home. Users are asked to observe a 'curfew' mid evening so that he can make his own phone calls!
WMBC alumni include schoolboy-birders-turned-ornithological-elder-statesmen Bill Oddie and Rob Hume. Rob recounts his birding youth in Staffordshire in his autobiography Life with Birds and there are exclusive, unpublished extracts from the book on the WMBC website.
Ornithology in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire & the West Midlands county, since 1929.
Fetched from http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/bibliography/british-birds/99-332.htm on Saturday 11 February 2012 11:18:14
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