Page 16 - Out Birding Winter 2023

View from the Chair
I have to say that the autumn migra􏰀on has been somewhat
disappoin􏰀ng for me this year compared to the extravagant
riches enjoyed in some other parts of the UK. Despite that, I have
seen three new species for my garden list: a Snow Goose mi-
gra􏰀ng past the house in a flock of Pink-footed Geese, a Balearic Shearwater was reward for my sea watching efforts and a long-overdue Pied Flycatcher taking ad- vantage of the boun􏰀ful insects around my compost heaps. Disappoin􏰀ngly, I was somewhere else when a Brown Booby almost certainly flew past my village. There have been mul􏰀ple sigh􏰀ngs of this species around the UK this year and I know that some members enjoyed an adult female that could be seen si􏰁ng on a buoy off South Gare in Teesside (just like the Collins Bird Guide says they do). Will our warm- ing climate bring more of these and other exo􏰀c seabirds to our shores? This could be one of the few posi􏰀ve impacts of global warming, but it can never offset the damage we are doing to our planet.
The commi􏰂ee con􏰀nues to be busy working on behalf of GBC, and we held one of our quarterly Zoom mee􏰀ngs on 18 September and our AGM on 28 September. Minutes of the AGM are provided in this issue of OB, so I won’t elaborate here, but it was good to see non-commi􏰂ee members par􏰀cipa􏰀ng in proceedings at our AGM, something that wasn’t happening to the same extent when we used to hold in- person mee􏰀ngs. The Zoom AGMs seem to be improving accessibility for our mem- bership which, although our AGM has no execu􏰀ve role according to our cons􏰀tu- 􏰀on, is s􏰀ll important to help to direct the commi􏰂ee’s work in the year ahead. So, we will retain this format for next year. We received a request for more feedback from the GBC commi􏰂ee mee􏰀ngs and we agreed that we could and should do this, star􏰀ng with a feedback slot in Out Birding.
At our last GBC commi􏰂ee mee􏰀ng we discussed the ongoing success of the Zoom talks and resolved to encourage more female speakers in future. We received inter- est from a prospec􏰀ve new member of the commi􏰂ee, but they were reluctant to take the final step, so we discussed what more we can do to increase the number of commi􏰂ee members. We spent a bit of 􏰀me examining whether we felt confident that a GGT 14 held in Scotland would a􏰂ract sufficient people to honour what would be our 30th anniversary celebra􏰀ons. We s􏰀ll feel we have insufficient clarity on this last point and agreed that polling par􏰀cipants at the Skegness GGT will help us to give us greater certainty. We also discussed some of the issues around transport for a􏰂endees if we hold it in Speyside.
Liz presented the annual accounts which showed that we s􏰀ll have a healthy balance and are s􏰀ll running a surplus from our membership fees. We are con􏰀nuing to ex- amine some poten􏰀al improvements to our membership system to take the hard work out of the renewal system and other improvements that would benefit our members. We discussed further measures we need to bring our health and safety
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