A good evening with BTO & SWLA

I missed last year’s BTO evening with the SWLA so I was glad to make this one. Always a good evening with an interesting mixture of people.

The Mall Galleries is a pretty good setting for an event and it was filled on Wednesday evening. I’m sure the artwork was superb but I hardly saw it except as a background because I was chatting to lots of people.

The BTO use the event to award their Dilys Breeze Medal which this year went to a very deserving Mary Colwell (see her blogs here, A Natural History GCSE, 23 November 2012; Shared Planet, 15 January 2015; Curlew Calls, 18 February 2016; and my review of her book on John Muir here) and a series of Marsh Awards too. Here are the other wwinners:

• Marsh Award for Ornithology – Dr Becki Lawson
• Marsh Award for Innovative Ornithology – Ben Kibel of Hookpads
• Marsh Award for International Ornithology – Prof Theunis Piersma
• Marsh Award for Local Ornithology – Bardsey Bird Observatory
• Marsh Award for Young Ornithologist – Toby Carter

All deserved winners – and all smiling a lot which was nice to see.

Readers of this blog would know the names of many of the people filling the room, eg Carry Akroyd, Martin Spray, Esther Tyson,  Michael McCarthy, Andy Clements (of course, and what a good host he is, NB his birthday is next week), Keith Betton, Chris Packham, Hugh Brazier, Andrew Sells (chair of Natural England), Georgia Locock, Patrick Barkham, Dick Newell, Mark Constantine, Ken and Linda Smith, and many others.

But I didn’t look at the artwork – I’ll be back next week to have a good look.

 

PS the largest laugh and applause of the evening came when Theunis Piersma said that he hoped the UK wouldn’t leave the EU

 

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