Club news - events, sponsors and requests

updated 25 July 2010

Friday 20 to Sunday 22 August 2010, British Birdfair 2010, Rutland Water, near Oakham, Rutland, UK
OBC will again be in Marquee 4 and will be delighted to meet members attending the fair. Please visit our stand and introduce yourself to the Council members manning the stand. Forktail 26 will be available for collection, so please come and pick up your copy!

Prize draw tickets will be available on the stand, and the first prize this year is the most recent Canon EOS model 550D with 18–55 mm zoom lens, which incorporates HD video as well as stunning still image capture, donated by London Camera Exchange (LCE). Canon is one of the brands of choice for professional wildlife photographers and we are delighted that LCE are continuing to support the Club. Our thanks go to them for assisting our conservation work in such a positive fashion. We also thank Council member John Gregory for the second prize—a week’s accommodation in his self-catering cottage in Stiffkey on the popular north Norfolk coast. The other prizes include a good variety of the latest books for birdwatchers.

OBC publications will be on sale at attractive special Birdfair prices. We also have leech socks and OBC caps for sale, and if you have not yet purchased your special limited edition 25th Anniversary mug, we still have a few of these for sale. Copies of Kukila 14 are also expected to be available.

Saturday 11 September 2010, 2010 Prize Draw
UK members will be mailed a book of prize draw tickets in mid-July. The draw is not restricted to members who live in the UK. All members may send payment (£1 per ticket) by sterling cheque or by debit/credit card to OBC Prize Draw, PO Box 324, Bedford, MK42 0WG, UK. Tickets in your name will be entered in the draw. Prizes will be drawn at the OBC Council meeting on 11 September 2010. The Club’s thanks go to LCE and all the other donors of prizes.

Saturday 30 October 2010, OBC 26th Annual General Meeting at the Wilkinson Room, St John the Evangelist, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2RN, UK.
The Club returns to Cambridge for the 26th winter meeting and AGM. The meeting will start at 11am and OBC refreshments will be on sale throughout the day. The full programme will be posted on the website in September. We expect WildSounds sales stand to be there and if any member would like a sales stand, please contact us at mail@orientalbirdclub.org. Space is limited, so it is strictly ‘first come, first served’.

Yunnan & Beijing, 6-28 November 2010 with OBC
China's southwestern-most province, Yunnan, has long been neglected as a destination by travelling birdwatchers. While neighbouring Sichuan certainly has a lot to offer ornithologically, Yunnan has now relaxed restrictions on access so that some of the least disturbed areas near the Burma border can be visited.

Anyone susceptible to the allure of Thailand and the eastern Himalayas will look wistfully at a map of the region and regret that Burma looks set to remain a tricky destination for ornithological pilgrims for years to come: long-planned tours have been cancelled a few days before scheduled kick-off as the essential permits were whimsically withdrawn, and the situation remains volatile.

However, west of the mighty Salween river, in China, steadily improving infrastructure has made accessible a variety of essentially "Burmese" habitats, from forests between 300-2,800m above sea level to paddies & scrub swarming with winter visitors and passage migrants. On this trip we will spend 17 days here, following an itinerary which, drawing on unequalled birding experience in the area, has been carefully planned to maximise field time. We will have time to properly search for the specialities of these secretive forests following a quick visit to picturesque Lijiang, home to the endemic Yunnan Nuthatch, east of the Salween biological divide.

For more details please contact Michael Edgecombe, OBC Promotions Officer, mail@orientalbirdclub.org or Jesper Hornskov at goodbirdmail@gmail.com.

Lao PDR and Cambodia 23 January–3 February 2011
BirdtourASIA’s fifth fundraising tour will once again seek out the highlights of Cambodia: Giant and White-shouldered Ibis, White-rumped Falcon, Bengal Florican and Mekong Wagtail. Following the amazing discovery of the Bare-faced Bulbul announced in Forktail 25, a week will be spent in Lao PDR searching for this limestone karst-dwelling passerine as well as other sought-after species. After Jerdon’s Bushchats on the Mekong, the search begins in the spectacular scenery of the Annamite mountains which also hold the recently described Limestone Leaf Warbler and Sooty Babbler. For further information, visit BirdtourASIA’s website.

NE Tibet, Koko Nor and SE Qinghai, 7-28 August 2011 with OBC
Situated in western China, rugged Qinghai province is the ideal place to see a mix of Central Asian specialities, Chinese/ Tibetan endemics, and isolated populations of otherwise mostly Siberian species. In zoogeographic terms we will be visiting the Tibetan Plateau and the deep valleys of its eastern fringes, with the latter showing particularly strong affinities with the least accessible parts of neighbouring Sichuan, known for its avifaunally rich Panda reserves.

Qinghai – with scenery fully on par with the very best in Sichuan and China’s ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’ – offers excellent, reliable & (with comparatively less developed tourism) affordable access to Tibet’s array of unique birds, mammals & flora.

Drawing on unequalled birding experience in Qinghai (some 45 comprehensive tours during 1995-2010 in addition to six years' residence in the province) the following itinerary incorporates several sites pioneered by your leader Jesper Hornskov as recently as in summer 2010. The present itinerary has been carefully planned and updated to take in as wide a range of habitats as possible, thus maximizing our chances of connecting with all target species. Improved infrastructure – mainly better roads, but also more frequent domestic flights – now allows us to incorporate into a three week tour the very best this part of Asia has to offer without compromising on the field hours: we have sufficient time to ensure that all specialities can be properly searched for, at a realistic pace. We shall be expecting to see around 220 species in Qinghai, with additional ones possible as we pass through Beijing.

View full itinerary .

For more details please contact Michael Edgecombe, OBC Promotions Officer, mail@orientalbirdclub.org or Jesper Hornskov at goodbirdmail@gmail.com. (Jesper: tel (fax on request) +86 10 8490 9652; mobile +86 135 1335 9831.)

Forktail back-issue papers now available online
To disseminate knowledge about oriental ornithology further, the editors of Forktail, the Journal of Asian Ornithology, have decided to make papers from Forktail freely available online.

Pdfs of papers and short notes for issues 13 onwards can now be downloaded directly. Earlier issues are still being scanned and will be added in due course. Articles from new issues will be put online once they are two years old.

Joining OBC remains the best way to obtain the latest Forktail articles, and the only way to receive OBC's superb BirdingAsia publication twice a year.

Advertise in BirdingASIA
Council thanks all those who advertised regularly in the OBC Bulletin and hopes that they will continue to do so in BirdingASIA. Advertisements help to offset production costs and benefit the Club significantly. The standard advertisement rates [black and white] are: full page £135; half page £85; quarter page £60. Colour advertisements are available at extra cost. For more information, contact Richard Thomas

We offer a complete service too: we can construct adverts from the text that you send us, and insert images and logos as required. Alternatively, we can accept your print-ready Pagemaker, Quark or film adverts. Pagemaker is the preferred format. Please contact Richard Thomas, OBC Bulletin Advertising via mail@orientalbirdclub.org.

OBC Corporate Sponsors
The OBC Corporate Sponsorship Scheme has recently changed to allow companies to choose the level of support for OBC, from £200 - £1000+ per annum. This newsletter explains the revised levels and gives examples of how businesses have helped OBC make a real difference to conservation and awareness raising in the Oriental region over the years.

Most payments are due for renewal and we hope that our past supporters will renew for OBC’s 25th Anniversary Year. Please contact Jo Thomas via mail@orientalbirdclub or phone Jo on +44 (0)1480 370593.

Current and recent sponsors include: Asia Ecological Consultants, Asian Adventures, Birdquest, BirdTourASIA, Limosa, London Camera Exchange, Rockjumper Birding Tours, Sunbird, The Bagh Resort, and Wildsounds .

OBC Business Supporting members
The Business Supporting membership scheme was started in 1992 and was intended to become the backbone of the Honorary membership fund. Participants in the scheme pay an annual subscription of £45 and which pays the subscription of three honorary members. At present Business Supporting members support about one third of the 155 honorary members.

OBC Business Supporting members currently include: Bird Information Service, Birdquest, BirdingEcotours, Birdwatch, Tom Gullick, Jetwing Eco Holidays, Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden Corporation, International Taiwan Birding Association, Limosa Holidays, Lynx Edicions, Mountain Trail Holidays Pvt Ltd, Murphy's Wildlife Holidays, Naturetrek, Rockjumper Birding Tours, Semioptera Pty Ltd, Subbuteo Natural History Books, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, Wild About India, Wildsounds, and Wildwings. OBC Council thanks our Business Supporting members and we look forward to welcoming more in the future.

OBC Supporting Members
The rest of the honorary members are paid for by the Supporting membership scheme. In this case the members pay £25 and support one honorary member. If they wish they may nominate a deserving individual. Currently there are over 110 Supporting members playing a major role in the Honorary membership fund. Join OBC explains how to join the scheme.

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