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Hampshire Ornithological Society

 
 

Hampshire Ornithological Society
 

Registered charity 1042309
Website: www.hos.org.uk

Hampshire Ornithological Society (HOS) was launched in 1979, emerging from the earlier Ornithological Section of the Hampshire Field Club. Membership is open to anyone with an interest in Hampshire’s birds, and we currently have over 1,000 members.

Our main aims are:

  • To promote recording and study of Hampshire birds,
  • To use this information to support conservation of the county’s birds and bird habitats,
  • To generally encourage education and wider interest in birds.
     

The things we do include:

  • Organising local participation in all major national bird surveys
  • Publishing a high-quality annual county Bird Report (typically 250 pages with colour photos)
  • Producing a quarterly newsletter for members
  • Running an annual Members Day conference (invariably attended by 200+ people)
  • Contributing to county-level groups and discussions on Biodiversity Action Plans, and other bird-related conservation issues
  • Inputting records to the Hampshire Biodiversity Information Centre
     

The Society recently organised a celebratory centenary of the 1910 bird-watching walk undertaken by Theodore Roosevelt and our Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey.

The county is rich in birds, with a wide variety of habitats. The coast includes the Solent and the estuary habitats of Southampton Water and Portsmouth Harbours, and of course we have the unique woodland and heathland habitats of the New Forest. Inland, we have further important heathland areas in the Thames Basin Heaths and Wealden Heaths SPAs, together with extensive farmland, and the chalk-stream river valleys of Avon, Test, and Itchen. There are considerable development pressures all along the coast, and also in the north-east of the county.

The Society is currently participating in the Bird Atlas project, and we intend to produce comprehensive local Atlas maps to update those that we published in the book Birds of Hampshire back in 1993.

For more information on the Society, please go to our website at www.hos.org.uk
 

Are you a birdclub partner? Would you like to be featured here?

If so contact Ieuan Evans (ieuan.evans [at] bto.org)

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