100 years of Cambridgeshire Bird Club

Nature Notes | Bob Jarman discusses the changing picture since it was founded in 1925.

The Cambridgeshire Bird Club is 100 years old this year. The Cambridge Ornithological Club was founded in 1925 in memory of Alfred Newton (1829-1907), professor of comparative anatomy at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of the Royal Society.

Membership was limited to just 25. Professor William H Thorpe (1902-86) was the first chair of the Cambridge Ornithological Club; his research was animal behaviour and birdsong.

One of the Club’s first members became Sir Peter Scott, wildlife artist and Olympic bronze medallist in sailing, who established the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in 1946 at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.

David Lack wrote The Birds of Cambridgeshire in 1934, The Life of the Robin in 1946 and eight other books on ecology and bird life, and he was also an early member.

So too was Eric Ennion, a practising GP from Burwell who became one of the country’s finest bird artists and founded the Society of Wildlife Artists.

Another early member was Alice Hibbert-Ware, who lived in Girton and was a teacher and naturalist who promoted school nature study.

From 1927, the Club published an annual report of bird observations and bird studies and her paper in the Club’s 1934 annual report proved that little owls eat beetles and small mammals but not game bird chicks.

This probably saved little owls from persecution and probable extinction. There is a commemorative garden dedicated to Alice in Girton.

One of the most remarkable observations was a pair of alpine accentors, birds of high mountain tops and the snow line, displaying in Claire College in 1931!

Until the 1970s the report included records from Hunstanton, the Wash and the Brecklands. The most watched location up to the 1960s was Cambridge Sewage Farm, “that foul smelling bird paradise”.

Two ruffs, wading birds, ringed at the sewage farm in August 1956 were recovered: one in Archangel, 2,500 miles away, in May 1957 and the second in Yakutsk, far eastern Siberia, 7,000 miles away in May 1959.

In 1946, a pair of moustached warblers feeding chicks were discovered in the ballast pits on the site of Cambridge North Station.

This was the first and is the only moustached warbler record for mainland UK and was even more remarkable because it involved a breeding pair.

Sixty years later the record was re-examined and discounted by the British Ornithological Union (BOU) that verifies the status of all UK bird records. Ironically the BOU was founded by Professor Alfred Newton in 1859.

A very important book is The Birds of Cambridgeshire, by club member Peter Bircham, in 1989 which documented the status of birds in “old” Cambridgeshire.

One observer suggested there were more nightingales along Trumpington Road in the 1930s per mile than any other road in England!

Red-backed shrikes used to breed in the hedgerows around Coldham’s Lane allotments, and a young marsh harrier ringed at Wicken Fen in June 1985 was found dead in Mauretania a month later.

In the 1990s, a series of student expeditions led by Guy Dutson and Paul Salaman to Ethiopia and Colombia discovered four new species of birds.

The scientific name of the choco vireo was auctioned and won by Bernard Masters, an American businessman, for $75,000 (c £70,000).

The bird was named Vireo masteri and the money used to support nature conservation in Colombia.

In the club’s 100 years, birdwatchers have recorded the of losses and gains of breeding birds in Cambridgeshire.

Woodland breeding birds have suffered most. The redpoll, willow tit and hawfinch have become extinct and the lesser-spotted woodpecker, once our commonest woodpecker, is now down to just three to four pairs.

But there has been a remarkable success of breeding marshland birds in Cambridgeshire; the cattle egret first bred in 2021 and 76 were seen near Swavesey in 2023.

The glossy ibis bred for the first time in the UK in 2022, and spoonbills bred for the first time in 2024. The black-winged stilt is becoming established as a regular breeding species.

From its limited membership of only 25 in 1925, over 1,500 birdwatchers contributed nearly 410,000 individual records to the club’s latest annual report!

Visit https://www.cambridgebirdclub.org.uk/ for more on the club.