SOC Highland Branch AGM 2026
7 April 2026 7.30pm
Welcome by Sue Sykes, Vice Chair
- Present: 26
- Apologies: Alister Clunas, Pete Gordon, Alex and Liz Joss, Tony Cluxton, Fiona Reid, David Galloway, Andy Douse
- Minutes of 2025 AGM – circulated with Agenda Mailchimp and taken as read
- Matters arising:
At the Spring Conference held in Inverness in 2025 the raffle raised an amazing £613.
Young people had made a significant contribution to the conference, so the committee decided to use the funds to enhance youth engagement.
The BTO/SOC run an excellent Bird Camp each year offering the opportunity for young people to engage with wildlife. However, such is the demand, that once a young person has been on a Bird Camp they are not eligible to attend subsequent camps.
It was to meet this perceived demand that a group of mothers came together to organise a weekend in early June in the Cairngorms for previous attendees of Bird Camps, unsuccessful applicants to Bird Camps and other interested young people. A donation of £300 was given to the group which will be used to fund an evening of wildlife watching in a mammal viewing hide.
There is a further £313 remaining. The committee will seek other youth projects to fund over the course of the coming year.
Thanks were given by Tracy Allan on behalf of the young birders for this donation. 15 families from throughout Scotland will participate in the arranged Cairngorm weekend. Josh Allan will kindly write a BLOG about their activities which will be posted on our website in due course.
Where to go on website: SOC HQ is currently updating their Where to go and our website shows a link to this. Nothing more has been done by Highland Branch.
Species Focus: input last year was low so Tree Sparrow and Breeding Wigeon will again be the focus for 2026.
- Chairperson’s Report – Alister Clunas (read by Sue Sykes who gave our thanks to Alister for his contribution as Treasurer and later as Chair. A book token will be given in appreciation.
I am standing down as Chair of the Highland Branch having served for four years.
It has been my great privilege to serve as Chair. Highlights have been the very successful Spring Conference in 2025 in Inverness and the increase in young people attending talks and outings. I hope this is something that the committee will continue to encourage and foster.
I would like to thank all the members of the Branch committee over the years. Thanks to Jon Clarke and Alex Joss who are retiring from the committee. In particular I would like to single out Mary Galloway who is a very efficient Secretary and Carol Miller who is our well organised Treasurer. I am grateful that these office bearers are continuing in their respective roles. Thanks to John Carruthers for auditing the accounts.
My thanks go to John Poyner, the Highland Bird Recorder; Pete Gordon who is Chair of the Records Committee and represents Highland on the SOC Council.
Alex Joss has stood down as the editor of the Highland Bird Report. Alex has been a long serving editor of the Highland Bird Report from 2008 to 2023. Our thanks go to Alex for the huge amount of work he has undertaken to produce the Highland Bird Reports over the years. I am grateful to Andy Douse for taking over the role of producing the Highland Bird Report.
Thanks to all those members who lead outings.
I would also like to pay tribute to those who update the sightings page daily on highlandbirds.scot currently Steve Broyd, Mike Crutch and Sue Sykes, with occasional guest appearances by Pete Gordon.
Thanks to all of you who attend meetings, outings and support the Highland Branch of SOC.
Finally, thanks to Kathy Bonniface who has provided refreshments at meetings over many years.
I wish Sue Sykes every success as she starts her term as chair.
I am sorry not to be with you tonight.
- Secretary’s Report – Mary Galloway
Several of our members have moved away from Highland area and we thank them all for their support. I mention Carol James for one, who has supported the Highland Branch for many years, and also Freydis and Nigel Campbell. The Campbells kindly donated many books for sale – proceeds to SOC. Several were sold at our meetings for £12 and the remainder were taken to SOC HQ for sale there. We welcome all new members and hope to meet them in person on our outings or indoor talks. Our thanks to Kathy Bonniface who continues to do the refreshments and to others who have stepped in to help her.
18 outings took place and blogs for most of these can be read on our website page highlandbirds.scot under Events. Excellent photos accompany these, taken by both younger and older members. Several ‘new’ venues were included – North Ronaldsay in May and October, Laikenbuie reserve by Nairn in April, and a weekend to Arisaig area including a day trip to Knoydart in May. The committee is always pleased to hear of places members would like to visit. Our thanks go to all leaders and speakers who have given their time and knowledge for our benefit and, again, we welcome anyone who is prepared to lead.
Next session will include an October Bird Race as well as the popular one in January. To accommodate student and workers, days of outings will include one Saturday per month (Sep-May) and less Thursdays. Outings will appear on our website by August.
Indoor meetings have been well attended. The Highland Libraries have increased their charges from £45 per indoor meeting to £71. Reluctantly the Committee are increasing entry fees – members now £4 and non-members £5 to cover hire costs . Other venues were considered but those costs were far higher. Once again we have had the pleasure of sharing our Zoom meetings with the members of Caithness and Orkney branches.
Membership numbers are 249 - a considerable drop from 280 last year.
- Treasurer’s Report – Carol Miller
Please see separate audited accounts for details.
Cash in bank 10.03.25 = £2900.03
Cash in bank 10.03.26 = £3537.15
Income:
The income from Highland Bird Report (HBR) is significantly reduced due to delayed publication.
Considerable income from raffles, mainly as a result of conference raffle, March 2025
Expenditure
Expenditure reduced due to no HBR hard copies ordered this financial year.
Postage reduced as a consequence.
Web-site charges, biennial
Hall rental costs (5 meetings) remained the same, but catering costs (meals for speakers) increased.
Leaving gift for Alex Joss following the end of his tenure as HBR Editor
Half of the raffle income is going to support our young birders at the upcoming youth camp in Strathspey.
Further bank charges
Other items of note:
HBR 2024 still to be bought
A further £300 has been ringfenced for future youth work
Hall hire costs are significantly increasing next session from £45 to £71 and so, unfortunately, we may need to increase our entrance fees.
Huge thanks to John Carruthers for auditing the accounts again this year.
Finally, this will be my last year as Treasurer as I am stepping down next AGM
Adoption of Accounts Proposer Alan Jones
Seconder Philip Wilson
- Retiring Committee Members Our thanks go to Jon Clarke, Alex Joss who have both been on the Committee for many years.
- Election of Officer Bearers and Committee Members:
Seconder Carol Miller
Committee Members: The following have agreed to join the Committee and we welcome them. We would also welcome anyone else who would consider joining us.
Philip Wilson Proposer Sue Sykes
Seconder Carol Miller
Mary Winsch Proposer Mary Galloway
Seconder Lesley Sage
10. Highland SOC Council Representatives report - Pete Gordon
This is but a small selection of the work carried out by SOC Council during the past year.
1 Council met four times, in June, September, December and March.
2 Membership – 2127 members in Feb 2026, (2108 in March 2025) continues the gentle upward trend.
3 Finance - Council is aware that expenditure is exceeding regular income and that legacy income, by its erratic nature, cannot be relied upon to bridge that gap. The Club has more financial reserves than the minimum required of us by the Charities Commission but is addressing the scenario that, without further action, this could be run down over future years. Council is addressing this situation by more regular budgeting, targeted measurement against agreed KPIs and reporting to Council against particular headings. In particular, Council will be looking to the source of funds before committing to expenditure.
4 Staff – Joe Yauch has been appointed as Assistant Development Officer,
Office-bearers: Ross McEwan took over from Rich Kerr as Honorary Treasurer at the November AGM.
5 Conferences – the Annual Conference held at Bearsden in 2025 was, for the first time, a one-day affair attracting 135 delegates (a 14% increase over 2024). The theme was “Scotland for Birds: Opportunities for Positive Change” and eight wide-ranging talks were well received.
The SOC/BTO Birdwatchers’ Conference in Dundee was fully booked and very successful.
Scottish Birds Records Committee Conference – the first ever such conference was held online over 3 evenings in September and very successful with over 300 bookings and an exciting range of talks.
In Celebration of the SOC’s 90th Anniversary, a talk, Q &A session and book-signing by renowned wildlife photographer and TV presenter Hamza Yassin is to be held in Dundee in April 2026.
7 Birding and Science. SOC has signed a partnership agreement to take forward the next Bird Atlas. A Methodology Sub-Group is discussing novel methods including passive acoustic monitoring whilst ensuring comparability with previous atlases. An Engagement Sub-Group is addressing volunteering, IT requirements and data capture methods, A successful Local Recorders Meeting was held in Stirling in summer 2025. Identification of, and plugging gaps in, bird knowledge since Birds in Scotland was published is ongoing.
8 Scottish Birds – 4 issues published. Hard copy and/or digital copy to all Members.
9 Five-year Plan – this has been adopted to address, challenge and revisit everything the Club does to make it fit for the future.
10 Waterston House, Aberlady – as it ages, repairs are necessary to maintain the fabric of the building. An ever-changing series of Art Exhibitions attract Members and non-Members alike (see SOC website for details) and sales provide commission income for the Club. Paid-for Birdwatching walks led by Scot Paterson also generate income.
- Highland Birds Website report - Pete Gordon
Sightings Page - updated daily by Mike Crutch, Steve Broyd and Sue Sykes.
Blogs – of all Outings, with accompanying photos, are posted on website. Other contributions on bird-related topics would be welcomed e.g. holiday trip reports.
Recording – what to do with your bird records. Highland Bird List. Rarities assessment.
Highland Bird Reports – recent Reports can be viewed online here. The 2024 Report will appear shortly. Details are given on availability of hard copies.
Events – information on Outings and Talks with details of how to sign up.
Where to Go – The SOC Where to Watch Birds App – which covers sites Scotland-wide – is only accessible on compatible phones whereas the SOC Highland Branch Where to Go can be read on laptops or PCs so it should not be deleted. However, it does need checking to ensure details are up to date and additional sites would be welcome. Can someone take this on?
Views – from 20/03/2024 to 20/03/2025 there were 69161 visits and 123565 page views, very similar to previous year (69161 and 12365 respectively).
New ideas wanted!
12. Highland Records Committee report – Pete Gordon
- Membership. Dean MacAskill, having completed his stint, stood down at the November AGM and was replaced by Angus Croudace. Georgia Platt has also joined the Committee, mainly assessing records submitted by other Committee members.
- Progress. HRC is more-or-less up to date with its assessment of submitted records. Batches of no more than ten records are assessed on a three-weekly timetable although there are occasional delays, usually when contentious records have to be reassessed.
- Meeting. The annual meeting by Zoom took place on 27 November 2025
- HRC List. The following subspecies have been removed from the List: Green-winged Teal, Siberian Chiffchaff and Scandinavian Rock Pipit. Great Shearwater has been added to the list as it was dropped by Scottish Birds Records Committee.
- Workload 82 records were assessed for 2024 and all but five were accepted. These involved 32 species or subspecies, headed by 8 Great White Egrets, 6 European White-fronted Geese, 6 Sabine’s Gulls, 5 Green-winged Teals and 5 Hobbies.
- Highland Recorder’s Report – John Poyner
Ad hoc email records are continually entered into Birdtrack, a few observers still send in an annual spreadsheet, which can be problematic, ideally these can be just uploaded to Birdtrack, however the system is clumsy and rarely if ever works because of different formatting used as well as being hugely time consuming. All significant records are taken from these and entered into Birdtrack, with the spreadsheet kept on file. I’ve been dabbling with using AI to go through this data, as well as with Birdtrack data to assist in summarising, however this is very much a work in progress, but there is clearly a lot of potential and fruit for discussion with other recorders on this. To date I have managed to get it to provide a useful summary by species for each month, by feeding in the sightings webpage, and am looking at how best to publish this.
The 2025 BTO Montane bird survey has hopefully provided us with a more comprehensive set of data for species such as Dotterel, Ptarmigan and Snow Bunting amongst others and this will be fed in to the next bird report.
The level of submissions continues to be good, for local and national rarities, it’s disappointing however that several BB records were not submitted, one remains outstanding and the other submitted per recorder as there were adequate photos.
There also continues to be some problematic areas with data collected by professional survey companies and its “confidentiality” which means it is likely missing inclusion into the Bird Report. This is clearly a wide ranging and rather complicated issue for all recorders, not just Highland, which needs addressing.
As ever, the major task of the year was the RBBP submission, which was completed in due course and returned, as was the Scarce Migrants report for BB.
I was delighted to be able to attend the SOC recorders conference in July, the first “face to face” event for several years. It was a very productive session to discuss workflows and issues faced by other recorders as well as with Birdtrack representatives and Mark Eaton of RBBP. I extend my thanks to SOC for organising this, and hopefully it will be a regular occurrence, it was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.
Finally, a huge thank you to the sterling efforts of both HRC and the website team for their ongoing hard work throughout the year, collating sightings and assessing records.
14. Highland SOC Species Focus - John Poyner
I’d like to continue with encouraging more breeding records of Wigeon and Tree Sparrow sightings, which didn’t gain much traction last year.
15.Whats App Groups Report - John Poyner
PLEASE NOTE: These groups are not run by the SOC Highland Branch and were set up independently.
Both groups continue to grow in membership with 208 members on the general group and 217 on the rare birds group. There are still some issues with posting of appropriate species and not overloading the messages and I think one every similar group experiences. Al, John and myself continue to try and monitor this as best we can, deleting where appropriate. A polite private message explaining to the user why this was done the best action.
16.Highland Bird Report – Andy Douse -
2024 HBR in final stages for proof read. Three more species writers are needed and anyone interested in knowing more – please contact Andy Douse direct.
At the time of writing, HBR 2024 is due to be online on the Branch website by the end of March. The hand-over of Editor role to me, Andy Douse has meant that it has taken longer to draft the report than is usually the case. In part this is due to the sheer magnitude of the task, and perhaps a degree of naivety in the sheer scale of all the work involved. As in previous years, many Members have contributed to the Report, either by submitting records, by analysing and reporting on records for the systematic list; by compiling District Summaries; submitting photographs for publication; writing articles; the ever fascinating Ringing Report; or proof-reading. I owe a huge debt of thanks to Alex Joss as previous Editor in facilitating the hand-over, and help throughout the year. From Pete Gordon as Chair of HRC, and John Poyner as Bird Recorder, along with all the other members of Highland Records Committee who asess claims of rare birds in Highland. Proof readers have had a particularly hard time this year, albeit one that will hopefully become easier as drafts are prepared to a consistent standard. We will, over the next few weeks be introducing advice on a consistent writing style, and I hope that will help authors prepare text that will require little editing.
There is, however, an ever present problem, which is that of recruitment of people to fill the gaps created as people resile from drafting responsibilities, in most cases after many years of delivering text, always to a high standard. We do need more volunteers, if we are avoid burdening a potentially diminishing group of authors. New volunteers are always welcome, and anybody interested should contact me, preferably by email.
A limited number of copies of the Report will be produced by print-on-demand. These should be available sometime in April. Work on the 2025 Highland Bird Report has commenced and it is hoped that it will be published within the current year.
17.AOB There was no other business.
18.Thanks to everyone for your continued support this year. It is only through the hard work of Highland Group members that the branch can continue its activities. If there is no other business, then I am going to close this AGM. Thanks for attending.
Meeting closed at 7.55pm
