We are looking forward to returning to the Atholl Palace Hotel for this year’s conference and AGM.

The full weekend programme will take place from Saturday through Sunday morning. Both residential (including dinner and accommodation on the Saturday) and day delegate options are available. Although not included in the residential fee, delegates will have access to a preferential room rate if they wish to independently book in to stay at the hotel on the Friday evening (£169 for a double room for single occupancy, £209 for a double/twin room with shared occupancy, both on a dinner, bed & breakfast basis). To choose this option, please email the hotel directly at events@athollpalace.com once you have booked your conference place - please do not phone the hotel, as front of house staff will not have access to the special rates.

Booking information

The members' residential fee of £275 per person (incl. VAT) is based on shared occupancy, or £340 for a double room for single occupancy. The members' day delegate rate is £50 for one day or £95 for both days, and meals can be booked separately. A number of discounted places are available to young birders aged under 30 years, priced at £75. More options (e.g. non-members' rates) are available via the booking form.

Please use the link below to book your place; alternatively, you can call the SOC office on 01875 871330 (Weds-Sun 10am-4pm). If you book online, you will receive an email confirmation of payment, and closer to the time, all delegates will receive pre-conference information including how to sign up for the Saturday outings and Sunday workshops. We regret that no refunds can be issued after Monday 4th November unless we are able to fill your place.

Please note that bookings will close on Sunday 17th November, to allow us time to finalise numbers with the hotel.

BOOK A PLACE


PROGRAMME

0900
Organised outings

1200
Exhibitor stands open

1230-1355
Registration & Buffet Lunch

1400
Welcome and Introduction

1405
Highlights from the study of bird migration – Prof Ian Newton

1455
Impact of time on bird conservation value at improved former industrial sites in Scotland – Lucy Purbrick, BSc Zoology, Edinburgh University; followed by Temporal resolution matters: using oceanographic variables to explain seabird breeding success - Ella-Sophia Benninghaus, PhD student, Aberdeen University

1520
Tea/coffee break

1550
Gardening for birds and other wildlife – Green-fingered George

1620
From bird records to bird conservation: Stories from the front line of
conservation science – Prof Jeremy Wilson, RSPB

1700
Summing up

1705
AGM, Branch Awards and Fellowship Awards

1800-1915
SOC/BTO Young birders’ networking session

1930
Conference Dinner

2100-0000
Ceilidh

0730-1000
Breakfast – Residential delegates

0845-0925
Registration – Day delegates

0930-1100
Workshops lead by Paul Howden-Leach, Stan da Prato, George Hassall, Ian Thomson, Steve Willis and Jared Wilson:

0930
Workshop - session A

1000
Workshop - session B

1030
Workshop - session C

1100
Tea/coffee break

1120
Seabird Counts: A Scottish perspective – Daisy Burnell, JNCC

1200
Why monitoring matters (.... even more than ever before)! – Dr Chris Wernham, BTO/SOC Vice-President (Birding & Science)

1240
Summing up

1245
Raffle Draw

1255
Close of conference

1300
Lunch


OUR SPEAKERS SO FAR:


Ella-Sophia Benninghaus

There are critical times of the year when environmental conditions have disproportionate impacts on the life history, prey availability, and breeding activity of seabirds. This study quantified the relationship between breeding success for five seabird species on the Isle of May, Scotland and three environmental covariates (sea-bottom temperature, stratification, and primary production) summarised over different temporal periods.  

Ella Benninghaus is a fourth year PhD student at the University of Aberdeen. Ella is predominantly interested in seabirds and for her PhD studies the link between oceanographic variables and seabird demography, diet, and distribution. For the last six years, Ella has also worked as a field scientist for UKCEH on the Isle of May, collecting data from a range of seabirds.  

Daisy Burnell - JNCC

Daisy will give us a brief dive into the Scottish results of Seabirds Count, the pressures Scottish colonies have faced and are facing, and the future of seabird conservation.

Daisy Burnell is a Senior Marine Ornithologist at JNCC. It was here that she coordinated the 4th breeding seabird census, Seabirds Count. Her passion for seabirds started in her masters, where she studied the foraging movements of Northern Fulmars breeding on Eynhallow, Orkney.

George Hassall - 'Green-fingered George'

George's presentation will cover his journey to becoming a wildlife gardener, starting as a young child through to a young adult at university. He'll look at how he first got into gardening and bird watching through his parents; growing up as an RHS Ambassador; working with Blue Peter and 8 out of 10 Bats; and finally at University and through his job. He will provide some ‘tips & tricks’ from his own garden that audience members can use in their own gardens at home. George will also be leading one of our workshops.

George, 19 years, is studying Environmental Science at the University of Stirling. His passions are wildlife, gardening, conservation and hiking. Before moving to Stirling, his hometown at the foothills of the mighty Pennines are where he enjoyed many a walk on the moors, drawing inspiration from the unique habitat.

George was crowned RHS Young School Gardener of the Year in 2014, and a year later he became the first RHS Young Ambassador in order to inspire other children to share his love of gardening and the natural world. George’s specialism is growing his own grub, wildlife gardening, dabbling at landscaping and he’s totally potty about ponds. George has loved nature all his life and feels a real drive to protect it, as it has helped him. George has made several TV appearances, including a regular spot as CBBC’s Blue Peter Gardener.

Prof Ian Newton

This talk will attempt to explain why birds migrate and how migration patterns vary across the globe. It will discuss the genetic control of migration, adaptations to migration and how migration patterns have changed over recent decades, in association with climate change. It will also illustrate findings from different methods of study, including ringing, radar and various tracking techniques.

Ian Newton has been interested in birds since boyhood, and is perhaps mainly known for his work on Sparrowhawks and other birds-of-prey, conducted mainly in south Scotland. More widely, he is especially interested on the factors that limit bird populations, and on ecology of bird migration. During his career, he has published more than 300 papers on different aspects of bird biology and about ten books, including two on bird migration. His book The ecology of bird migration, now in its second edition, has become the standard text for researchers on this subject.

During his career, he has served as President of the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) and the British Ecological Society (BES), and is an Honorary Fellow of the North American Ornithologists’ Union. He has also served as Chairman of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the British Trust for Ornithology, and the Peregrine Fund in the United States. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (1993)
and Royal Society of Edinburgh (1994).

Lucy Purbrick

Restoration of former industrial sites is an excellent method to increase habitat for birds, particularly where space is limited. To best achieve this, we need to better understand succession’s effect across a variety of sites and at different habitat types, as well as how this translates for threatened species. This talk explores how the age and habitat type of restored sites, common in Scotland's Central Belt, affects their ability to support a high diversity of bird species, in particular threatened species.

Lucy Purbrick first got involved with SOC when she attended a Lothian branch talk in 2014 about the Fife white tailed eagle reintroduction for her primary seven project. Two years later she became a member of SOC, and was one of the first members of SOC Young Birders. She spoke at the 2019 SOC conference about her “patch on the app”, Linlithgow Loch, a site which influenced her love of birds from a young age. Lucy attended University of Edinburgh, where she was a member and eventually president of the bird society. She graduated with a BSc Honours in Zoology in July 2024. Lucy is passionate about science communication and community outreach, and has been volunteering with Edinburgh Zoo’s day-to-day engagement and seasonal education programmes for over two years. Her favourite bird is a House Martin, as seeing these in her street prompted her to get her first bird book aged 8.

Dr Chris Wernham - BTO Scotland

Chris will start with her own experiences of wildlife monitoring and why it
personally matters to her, and then take a look at why the collection of information
through long-term monitoring schemes is essential for biodiversity conservation.
Through some examples of how such information is used, she will explain why she feels that getting involved in monitoring as a volunteer has never been more valuable for birds...

Dr Chris Wernham has been a birdwatcher since the age of about 8 and has been
carrying out bird monitoring as a volunteer for more than 30 years, starting with surveys with RSPB on Islay in the late 1980s and a full survey of the new Forsinard reserve in the mid 1990s. Starting her career with a PhD on Puffins on the Isle of May, Chris took up her first job at BTO in 1996 and has had a range of roles since (several involving development of monitoring and the use of information from monitoring schemes). She has led the BTO Scotland team in Stirling since 2002 and is now BTO's Director for Country Operations by day and has the huge privilege of being SOC's Vice-President for Birding & Science.

Prof Jeremy Wilson - RSPB

Jeremy will use examples from RSPB’s work from Scotland, from elsewhere in the UK, and internationally, to take the journey from bird recording to bird conservation success. He will show how problem-solving scientific work can help us to detect and understand the causes of bird declines; to design and test solutions; and to measure success, at all scales from nature reserves to nations, and will pay tribute to some of conservation scientists whose ingenuity and dedication lies behind these stories.

Jeremy Wilson is Director of Science at RSPB, based in Scotland, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Honorary Professor at the University of Stirling. Jeremy is a recent Vice-President of SOC, and his long association with the Club began in the late 1980s when he came to Edinburgh University to undertake PhD studies of the social behaviour of Great Tits, and postdoctoral research on Dipper ecology on the Midlothian Esk, all supported by local SOC and Lothian Ringing Group members. After migratory visits to the BTO and to the Edward Grey Institute at Oxford University, Jeremy established a home range in the RSPB’s Conservation Science team where he has had the great good fortune to be able to devote his career to scientific studies to solve bird conservation problems.


OUR WORKSHOP LEADERS SO FAR:

Stan da Prato

Stan da Prato is a past president of the SOC and a current editor of the club journal Scottish Birds, as well as the chair of the advisory committee for Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve. He has a PhD on warbler ecology in the Lothians. Now retired after a career in education, he is also well known horticulturally, especially as a grower of alpine plants, editor of The Caledonian Gardener, a judge for Beautiful Scotland and a recipient of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Community Champion Award.

Paul Howden-Leach, Wildlife Acoustics

Sound recording is becoming an ever-popular method for surveying and identifying birds. Its use as a professional and amateur research tool, as well as for art installations, and dare I say it as a hobby is allowing for the development of recording equipment to advance these techniques. With that in mind this workshop will look at the evolution of bird recording, from where it all started and the issues these pioneers had to overcome, to where we are today. By looking at the equipment which is currently available we will cover methods of recording and data analysis, through listening and looking at sounds, hopefully removing some of the hurdles which might make this technique appear daunting. Finally, we will look at how to get started and become part of the bird sound recording movement to help with bird conservation from a local to an international level.

Paul has been working as a practical field ecologist for over 24 years, specialising in bat (and later bird) bioacoustics. For the past 11 years he has run his own ecological consultancy (Skyline Ecology) based in the heart of the Peak District National Park, specialising in protected species ecology and bioacoustics sound analysis. In addition, Paul works with Wildlife Acoustics, a bioacoustics equipment company based in Boston USA. As part of this work Paul is a regular speaker at conferences, promoting the benefits of using bioacoustics as part of the biologists’ tool kit. Paul also runs training courses on multiple aspects of bioacoustics all over the world which cover a range of experience levels from PhD and post-doctoral researchers to amateur naturalists involved in citizen science projects and school groups. He works in an advisory capacity within the academic and business sectors on improving methods of recording and analysing sound from large data sets, and assists as an advisor for the BBC Natural History Department and other TV production companies. Paul’s interest in bioacoustics has now developed into a wide range of sound recording and analysing techniques, including acoustic, ultrasonic and infrasonic sound, and has created numerous soundscapes for both community and international projects and events.

Ian Thomson

Identifying birds of prey can be challenging – they are often hard to see, are very shy and may only be a distant silhouette, disappearing over a hill. This light-hearted workshop takes a close look the species you’re most likely to come across in Scotland, and gives you some key tips that will help you separate your eagles from your Buzzards and your hawks from your falcons.

Ian Thomson is from Aberdeen. After leaving school he studied Ecology at Edinburgh University, and then did a variety of contracts including as a deer stalker, water bailiff, countryside ranger and research fieldworker, before landing his “dream job” as warden at Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve in East Lothian. After 15 years there, he moved on to join the Investigations team at RSPB in 2006, and has lead on their work in Scotland since 2012. He’s a mad keen birder and bird photographer, a slow cyclist and a diehard fan of Aberdeen FC. He’s been watching raptors in Scotland and abroad for 45 years!

Steve Willis - BTO Scotland

In this interactive session BTO Scotland's Steve Willis will take you through some of the many and varied websites and smartphone apps that can help you improve your birding. From fun quizzes you can do to some of the emerging auto-identification apps Steve will summarise what they do and how you can get involved. We'll also talk about what you can get from BirdTrack and also, of course, the Where to Watch Birds in Scotland app.

Steve joined the BTO in 2020 having worked in nature conservation for 20 years, the vast majority of that time in Scotland. Upon graduating from University Steve spent some time volunteering with the US Fish & Wildlife Service. On returning home, he got a seasonal contract as a Countryside Ranger with the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park before joining the National Trust for Scotland's Ranger Service, where he worked for over 6 years. Steve joined the Scottish Raptor Study Group in 2013 and has been active with surveying a number of raptor species since then. 

Jared Wilson

This informal workshop will discuss what we can do to maximise our chances of finding unusual birds; how to decide where and when to go birding, what to look out for when you are there, and what to do if you are lucky enough to find something unusual.

Jared cut his birding teeth at an inland reservoir in central England before spending a few years chasing other people’s birds. After several years undertaking ornithological research in Central America, West Africa and Central Asia he spent time as site manager on the Isle of May NNR, working for the RSPB in Scotland and in Wales, as an marine ecological consultant and more recently with the Scottish Government. These days he spends most of his birding time in the East Neuk of Fife where recent bird finding highlights have included Fea’s-type Petrel, Stejneger’s Stonechat and Stejneger’s Scoter.  


We are very grateful to Wildlife Acoustics for sponsoring the event, and to MacArthur Green for sponsoring the SOC/BTO Young Birders' networking session.