The Rare Breeding Birds Panel is 50!

The Rare Breeding Birds Panel was established as an independent body dedicated to the monitoring of the UK’s rare breeding birds in December 1972, but the first meeting of the Panel was not held until the following spring, and recording and reporting began from the year 1973 onwards. Thus, this year marks our 50^th anniversary, and we have a range of activities planned to mark this auspicious occasion.

First up, we wish to invite you to our first ever conference, to be hosted online on the evenings of 15^th and 16^th March.

We have a great line up of speakers to tell us about their work on the UK’s rare breeding birds. Each evening will include a talk from the Panel, about our work and what it tells us about the UK’s rare breeding birds. We will also hear about the use of RBBP data to support conservation efforts, about the work that goes into collecting that data, and a range of talks about the birds themselves: over the two nights we will hear about Red Kites, Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers, Capercaillie, Hawfinches, Little and Roseate Terns, Honey-buzzards, and some of the more amazing records to have reached the RBBP in our five decades of monitoring.

The conference programme

The conference will be held via zoom; each talk will be followed by a short question session for you find out more from the speakers. There is no charge for the event, but attendees will need to register in advance, which can be done on this link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/537295434107

Following the conference, we will be spreading the word about the work of the Panel through a range of papers and articles. These will include papers on our 50 years of monitoring in the journals British Birds and British Wildlife, with a range of new analyses and insights. We will be continuing the “From the archives” series of papers in British Birds which, having highlighted breeding records of Great Grey Shrike and Spotted Sandpiper, will next turn to a review of the European Serin breeding in the UK. Of course, there will be our annual report, covering Rare Breeding Birds in the UK in 2021, due out in November, and before that we will be publishing one of our less frequent reports on rare non-native breeding birds, covering the period 2015 to 2020 (in September).

Our website will be getting a 50^th anniversary update, with new features to be added through the year giving more information on rare breeding bird species, how to monitor them, and interactive functions enabling users to explore the results from our monitoring work.

We hope you’ll enjoy finding out a bit more about the Rare Breeding Birds Panel in 2023, and hope you can join on us on the 15^th and 16^th March to celebrate our birthday with us!