The 2023 HOS Members Day was held on Saturday 1 April 2023 at St Swithun’s School, Winchester, SO21 1HA.
Recordings of the talks can be seen below.
Photos of the day can be downloaded here. Thanks to HOS member Ian Julian for taking the photos.
Agenda
| 09:30 | Exhibition opens / free time |
| 10:30 | HOS AGM |
| 11:00 | Beccy Speight (Chief Executive, RSPB) |
| – Nature is in crisis. Together, we can save it | |
| 11:45 | Juliet Vickery (Chief Executive, BTO) |
| – Using citizen science to understand and conserve birds | |
| 12:30 | John Clark (author of Rare Birds in Hampshire) |
| – Rare Birds of Hampshire | |
| 13:00 | Exhibition open / Free time |
| 14:30 | James Aldred (award-winning camera operator and author) |
| – Goshawk Summer | |
| 15:15 | David Lindo (The Urban Birder) |
| – A World of Urban Birds | |
| 16:00 | Close |
HOS Members Day – Speaker Biographies
BECCY SPEIGHT
Beccy started her career working in local government in Scotland and then with the management consultants Smythe Dorward Lambert. In 2000 she joined the National Trust, initially as the general manager of the Stourhead Estate and in 2005 became director for the East Midlands and Midlands regions. She moved to be chief executive at the Woodland Trust in 2014 and led expansion of the woodland creation charity and also a review of its priorities. In 2019 she was appointed the Chief Executive Officer at the RSPB.
JULIET VICKERY
Juliet started as a DPhil student at Oxford studying Dippers and going on to complete a post doctorate at the University of East Anglia on Brent Geese before taking up a lectureship at the University of Edinburgh. After a short spell with Scottish Natural Heritage she spent 10 years at BTO as Head of The Terrestrial Ecology Unit, leading their work on the ecology and conservation of farmland birds. Then for 11 years she was Head of International Conservation Science at the RSPB. In 2020 she was appointed Chief Executive of the BTO.
JOHN CLARK
John had a successful career in teaching, becoming an Assistant Head. His interest in birds started at school and in his teenage years he was already producing a report on birds seen in the Hampshire/Surrey Border and a book on the area in 1984. He was co-editor of Birds of Hampshire in 1993. He was County Recorder for Hampshire from 1992 to 2009, and in 2022 he wrote the HOS book Rare Birds of Hampshire, which assessed the status of every rare bird ever seen in Hampshire.
JAMES ALDRED
As a keen young climber and wildlife photographer growing up in the New Forest, James became obsessed with exploring the forest canopy. Those formative years defined his future choice of career as a wildlife cameraman. In 1997 he worked on a couple of “normal” films but was missing nature too much so headed to Bristol to enter the world of natural history film-making. He got his first proper break with the BBC in 1998 when they sent him to film in the rainforest canopy of Borneo. Since then he has been lucky to film in dozens of different countries and to spend long periods working in remote wilderness locations.
DAVID LINDO
David was born and raised in London and has loved anything nature-related since he was very young. When he was three he went missing during a family party – the Police were called and a search party dispatched and he was eventually found standing outside a graveyard watching Magpies. David’s main passion is for urban birds and he spends his time doing as much as he can to promote the appreciation and conservation of the birds that share our city lives. He now travels the world encouraging people to enjoy urban birding. Through his TV appearances, writing, talks and tours he inspires people to re-look at their urban environments.
Annual General Meeting
Recording of the HOS AGM, which opened the day.
Venue map
Click here to download a pdf of the map