Welcome to the 62nd season of Mid-Cheshire Ornithological Society and I hope you are all looking forward to another exciting birding year. The new season will soon be upon us.

Society Business

Mike Hems

Sadly, we learnt recently that Mike Hems passed away. Mike was a staunch committee member of our society and was our treasurer for several years, before he & Ruth moved up to Speyside in 2010 to be near their daughter Catherine. Mike was a very keen and accomplished photographer and gave us several talks. He also organised and led many of our long weekend trips. Mike set up our society website and after moving to Aviemore carried on looking after it remotely for the next 15 years and was always very interested in what was going on with the society. We were very grateful for his continued involvement with us.

Once up in Aviemore he quickly became a volunteer with the RSPB at Loch Garten, and they soon became aware of his amazing IT skills. These were used to set up webcams for various rare nesting raptors including White-Tailed Eagle and the tracking of tagged Ospreys on their migration from Scotland to West Africa and back.

Due to Mike’s ill health, our website closed in June and following a discussion at our recent committee meeting, it was felt that there is still a need for one and we are exploring other avenues to set one up. If any of our members have any experience in this field and think they can help (or know someone who can), then please let us know.

Committee

We have a new addition to our committee in Joe Carroll. Joe is already our recorder and looks after our reserve at Hatton’s Hey on the River Weaver near Kingsley, including monitoring the nestboxes.

Christmas Lunch

We need to know whether our members would like to continue with the tradition of Christmas Lunch, following the mid-week group’s field trip to Marbury Park in December. If you are regulars, could you please email your thoughts to any of the committee members (email addresses at the bottom of the newsletter).

Membership & Subscriptions

The annual subscription fee of £20.00 per person will remain the same as last year.

If you are willing to receive future newsletters by e-mail, or your e-mail address has changed, then please include it on the renewal slip. This will help in keeping down our running costs. Please make your cheque payable to Mid-Cheshire Ornithological Society and send it to our Treasurer, Stephen Williams, enclosing the renewal/joining slip. You will receive your receipt at the first indoor meeting.

Alternatively, you may prefer to pay by bank transfer into our National Westminster Northwich branch using the Account Name: Mid-Cheshire Ornithological Society, Sort Code: 60-15-29 and Account Number: 40512002. Please identify your payment as SUBS2025 and insert your surname into the reference field. Finally, please email Stephen when you have paid (contact details on the website).

Entry to indoor meetings is free to members and £4 to non-members. Please remember that the meetings start at 7.00pm at Hartford Village Hall. There is now a nominal £1 charge (voluntary) for all our field trips towards our society funds – transport is by members’ cars, so please give one of us a ring if you would like a lift.

Programme for 2025-2026 Season

The first indoor meeting is on 13th October 2025 when we welcome back Gary Prescott, the ‘Biking Birder’ to give his talk ‘Peruvian Birds – Pacific to Amazonia’.

The first mid-week walk is on 16th September 2025 when Ged Petch will lead a walk to RSPB Conwy.

Our first weekend trip is a 3-day visit to ‘East Yorkshire’ in Mid-October (17th-19th), led by Ray Evans. Last year we had some great migrants on the trip to Yorkshire including Red-flanked Bluetail, Pallas’ and Radde’s Warbler. Further weekends are planned for South-West Scotland in February and Dorset in May. Please let Ray know asap if you would like to come on any of the three weekend trips, especially the Yorkshire one in October as the hotel needs to be booked by the end of August/early September (email below).

As we don’t have a Society website now and we don’t issue membership cards anymore (cost saving), the full programme for the 2025/2026 season is printed below.

Indoor Programme

All meetings on the second Friday of the month at Hartford Village Hall at 7:00pm.

October 10th - ‘Peruvian Birds -Pacific to Amazonia’ Gary Prescott

November 14th – ‘Secret Wildlife of the Forest of Dean’ Nick Martin

December 12th – ‘Feathers and Wings’ Brian Anderson

January 9th - ‘Orangs & Birds of Borneo/Birding in Costa Rica’ Mike Whiteside

February 13th –  ‘Wild Photography around the UK’ David Winnard

March 13th - ‘Finland – Wildlife in the Snow’ David Tolliday

April 10th - AGM

Mid-week Field Trips

Meetings are always on Tuesdays and the meeting place and leader are in brackets. Trips are led by Stephen Williams (SW), Ged Petch (GP), Andrew Aldridge (AA) and Simon Smith (SS).

September 16 - RSPB Conwy - (Meet Carpark 10.00am - GP)

October 28 - Pennington Flash - (Meet Carpark 10.00am - AA)

November 18 - RSPB Point of Ayr - (Meet Carpark Talacre 10.00am - SW - HT 09.52)

December 16 - Marbury + Xmas lunch – (Meet Carpark 10.00am – GP)

January 20 - RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands - (Meet Carpark 10.00am - SW)

February 17 - Brereton Heath Local NR – (Meet Carpark 10.00am – GP)

March 17 - RSPB Marshside – (Meet RSPB Carpark 10.00am – AA)

April 14 - Mere Sands/Martin Mere – (Meet Mere Sands carpark 10.00am – SW)

May 12 - Goyt Valley – (Meet 10.00am – SS)

Weekend Field Trips

Meetings are always on Sundays unless weekends. Meeting place and leader in brackets Trips are led by Graham Haspey (GH), Paul Kenyon (PK) and Ray Evans (RE).

October 17th-19th - East Yorkshire weekend – (RE)

November 9th – RSPB Leighton Moss – (Meet Carpark 9.30am- GH)

December 7th – RSPB Marshside/Hesketh Bank – (Meet RSPB Carpark 9.00am - PK)

January (Tide dependent – date to be arranged) – N Wales Coast/Foryd Bay – (Meet Llanfairfechan front - 9.00am - RE)

Feb 27th- Mar 1st – Weekend in SW Scotland – (RE)

March 22nd – World’s End/Clocaenog – (7/7.30am World’s End; 9.30am Clocaenog – GH)

April 26th – Conwy Valley/Clocaenog/Brenig – (Meet RSPB Conwy 9.00am – RE)

May 21st - Weekend in Dorset – (RE)
 

24th - June 7th – Llangynog, N Wales – (Meet Village carpark 9.00am – PK)

Ray Evans/Andrew Aldridge