Dr Mark A. Eaton
Secretary of RBBP; member since 2007

Mark was appointed Panel Secretary in April 2020, having been a Panel member since 2007, and Chair since 2012. He worked for the RSPB from 2001 and was Principal Conservation Scientist in the Monitoring section at the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science before leaving in autumn 2021 to concentrate on his RBBP duties, alongside some work as an independent ornithologist and conservation scientist. He was responsible for overseeing much of the RSPB’s involvement in monitoring and reporting upon the state of biodiversity in the UK and internationally.  He is a board member of the European Bird Census Council (see www.ebcc.info) having previously been Chair, and is now editor of their journal Bird Census News, and is Honorary Secretary of the British Ornithologists’ Union. Before the RSPB, Mark studied wintering waders on the Northumberland and Durham coasts, and worked on conservation projects in Canada and Mexico. When not working he’s often to be found birding on the Northumberland coast.

Dawn E. Balmer
Chair of RBBP; member since 2014; BTO Representative
Head of Surveys at the British Trust for Ornithology

Dawn has worked for the BTO since 1992 on a wide range of census, fieldwork and ringing projects and was the Migration Watch and BirdTrack Organiser from 2002–2006. She was the Atlas Coordinator for the Bird Atlas 2007–11 project, which resulted in the publication of the book in November 2013. During that time Dawn worked closely with the RBBP Secretary and attended two RBBP meetings to discuss appropriate mapping scales for rare breeding birds in the Atlas.

Her current role within the Monitoring team at the BTO is Head of Surveys. Dawn lives in the Brecks and is a keen birder, fieldworker and ringer and enjoys spending time at the local pigfields looking at gulls. Dawn is on the Editorial Board of British Birds, a member of the British Birds Rarities Committee, a Trustee of the Eric Hosking Charitable Trust and writes regularly for British Wildlife and Sandgrouse.

Helen Baker
Member of RBBP since 2018; JNCC Representative
Marine Species Team Leader at JNCC

Helen is Marine Species Team Leader at JNCC and responsible for managing the marine ornithology group, which includes UK seabird monitoring, strategic and technical advice, and offshore industry evidence and advice. Prior to this she had several roles in JNCC providing technical advice to UK government on bird conservation, research needs, ecosystem services and natural capital, and biodiversity reporting. As part of her ornithological roles in JNCC, Helen has advised on EU Birds Directive implementation, the African Eurasian Waterbird Agreement, the Agreement on Albatrosses and Petrels, Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar), and has been involved in managing aspects of the JNCC-BTO Partnership Agreement, including BBS and WeBS, and the WWT Goose and Swan Monitoring Programme.

Before working for JNCC, Helen worked for SNH on Special Protection Area designation, and before that on a number of research projects, including five years in Hawaii working on Hawaiian honeycreepers and Nene, and studying Crested Tits in Abernethy Forest for her PhD. She was also the Fair Isle Bird Observatory administrator in 1998 and helped run the ringing station at Elms Farm in Sussex for a year. Helen has also been involved in the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) for over 10 years and has been its Honorary Secretary since 2014. As well as birding in NE Scotland, she is a field mycologist with an unhealthy interest in Russulas, records moths and flowering plants, and is a bad ceramicist.

Paul Castle
Member of RBBP since 2023; independent

Paul is Wiltshire Bird Recorder, since 2022, and managing editor of the Wiltshire bird report, 1992–1996 and 2006 to present. He served three terms as Chair of the Wiltshire Ornithological Society, was a co-author/editor of Birds of Wiltshire (2007) and was one of the organisers of the Wiltshire Tetrad Atlases 1995–2000 and 2007–2012. He was a Trustee of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust for seven years and has been a member of the Trust’s Conservation Policy Committee for over twenty years.

As a sub-group leader in the Salisbury Plain MOD Conservation Group, Paul has co-ordinated Hen Harrier winter roost surveys on Salisbury Plain since 1985 and has been co-ordinator of the Wiltshire Raptor Group since 1992. His main project was Montagu’s Harrier conservation, until they last nested in 2019, other projects have included Red Kite radio tracking and winter roost surveys. His day job is IT management.

Dr Ian S. Francis
Member of RBBP since 2001; independent
Was RSPB area manager for NE Scotland for 30 years before retirement in autumn 2021.

Ringing permit holder, member of Grampian Ringing Group and Osprey co-ordinator for the NE Scotland Raptor Study Group. Joint co-ordinator of Greenland White-fronted Goose Study and NE Scotland Breeding Bird Atlas. Founding Chair, NE Scotland Biological Records Centre. Past editor, NE Scotland Bird Report and Scottish Bird News, Born 1959. Ph.D. in peatland hydrology. BSBI vice-county plant recorder for South Aberdeenshire.

Particular interests within ornithology: Geese, especially Greenland White-fronts, raptors (especially Ospreys), waders, Lapland Buntings, atlasing and biological recording, and African birds. Publications: wide range of publications, e.g. on Greenland White-fronted Geese, Lapland Buntings, Broad-billed Sandpipers, African birds, peatland and land use issues, many articles in local bird reports. Author/editor of three books on birds in NE Scotland including ‘The Breeding Birds of North-East Scotland’.

Mark Holling
Member of RBBP since May 2006 (former RBBP Secretary May 2006 to April 2020); independent

In April 2020 Mark retired from the Secretary role after 14 years in the job, the longest-serving Panel Secretary to date. He now attends Panel meetings as an independent member focussing on the maintenance and development of the Panel’s 47 year archive.

Mark has a long-held interest in the status and distribution of birds in the British Isles. An active member of the birding scene in southeast Scotland, he is a former President of Scottish Ornithologists’ Club (2003-2005) and was a member of Atlas Working Group for Bird Atlas 2007-11. He is a co-author of Birds in South-east Scotland 2007-13 (2019) and The Breeding Birds of South-east Scotland (1998), both local tetrad atlas studies.

To contribute to our knowledge of birds’ status, he has organised and taken part in many local and national surveys. He has written up a number of such studies, including Nuthatches in Lothian and roof-nesting gulls in Edinburgh. Since 1995 he has also been a member of the Lothian & Borders Raptor Study Group, initially compiling data on the re-colonisation of the Borders by Buzzards and now co-ordinating records of Long- and Short-eared Owls. He is also a member of the Forth Seabird Group, focussing his counting on the larger gulls and Common Terns. Recent interests include the status of Yellow Wagtails and Rock Pipits in Lothian.

Since 2002 he has lived by the sea in North Berwick, East Lothian, finally returning to the coast after spells in Scottish Borders, Leicester and Nottingham, having been brought up on the Yorkshire coast. He has been active in local ornithology in all these areas, initially cutting his teeth on Herring Gulls on his local cliffs and roof-tops in Scarborough, and, as a teenager, advising Scarborough Borough Council about their “gull problem” in the 1970s.

Professor David Norman
Member of RBBP since 2005; independent

David has lived in Cheshire since 1978 where he was a physicist and Director of a national scientific facility before retiring early. He wrote the 704-page Birds in Cheshire and Wirral: a breeding and wintering atlas, for which Cheshire and Wirral Ornithological Society (CAWOS) won the inaugural Marsh Award for Local Ornithology (2010). He chairs Merseyside Ringing Group and publishes their acclaimed website, and is an avid ringer and contributor to the BTO’s Nest Record Scheme. He served two terms as a member of the national Ringing Committee (1986–90 and 2013–17). The BTO recognised his volunteer work in surveying, nest recording and ringing birds by awarding him its Tucker Medal in 2002.

David’s RBBP-related fieldwork includes ringing chicks in Cheshire’s Peregrine nests since 1993, a long-running study (1983-present) of Wales’ only Little Tern colony, and proving several ‘first breeding records’ for Cheshire: Marsh Warbler (1991), Cetti’s Warbler (2009) and Marsh Harrier (2010). His broad interests in birds are illustrated by published papers on Sand Martins, waders on the Mersey Estuary, heronries, Fieldfares, Common Terns, Little Terns, Wood Warblers, Firecrests and Bramblings. He wrote the BTO Migration Atlas texts on Common Tern, Wood Warbler and Chaffinch, and has recently written the Little Tern text for EBBA2, the second European Breeding Bird Atlas, and co-authored the Little Tern contribution for the new edition of Birds in Wales.

He has always been an advocate for the conservation value of bird study, and has been active in committee rooms as well as in the field. David was a Council member of English Nature (1996–2002), acting as Chairman for six months, a member of RSPB Council (2004–09) and Chairman of Cheshire Wildlife Trust (2004–12), during which time he edited two books for CWT. He is President of CAWOS, and currently a trustee of two local charities: the Mersey Gateway Environmental Trust and Norton Priory Museum and Gardens Trust.

It will not surprise readers to know that David’s favourite bird is a Little Tern that he ringed as a chick in 1993 and is still going strong as a breeding male at the same colony, the world’s oldest known Little Tern.

Andrew Stanbury
Member of RBBP since April 2020; RSPB representative

Andrew works as a Conservation Scientist in the Monitoring section at the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science. Over the last decade he has been involved with many monitoring projects, including national surveys of Dotterel, Ring Ouzel, Snow Bunting and Cirl Bunting. In addition, Andrew spent time researching Hawfinch breeding ecology and investigating the causes of Whinchat decline in the UK uplands. Other projects have included leading the Regional IUCN Red List assessment for birds in Great Britain and co-authoring the 2019 ‘State of Nature’ Report. He also sits on the UK Crane Working Group, coordinating the annual breeding figures for the UK. Before working the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, Andrew undertook land management on nature reserves across the country for eight years.

Katy Westerberg
Member of RBBP since 2023; independent

Katy has worked for the RSPB since 2019 and currently works in the Conservation Data Management Unit, working with the organisation’s species data and data flows with national recording schemes. Before this she worked as a fieldworker on a range of conservation projects, including the Seabirds Count census in Dumfries and Galloway and Shetland, and the Orkney Native Wildlife Project, undertaking surveys on a wide range of species. Katy has a particular interest in seabirds, spending two summers on Skokholm island carrying out research on Great Black-backed Gulls and European Storm Petrels. She is also a ringer and always keen to spend time on remote islands surrounded by seabirds.

Katy lives in Dumfries and Galloway, and while she still monitors local seabird colonies for the Seabird Monitoring Programme, she has an interest in all nature and the outdoors, enjoying moth trapping and wildflower identification, and spending time exploring the Galloway Hills.