Honorary Secretary and Meetings Organiser

After five years in the post of Honorary Secretary and Meetings Organiser, Tony Statham plans to stand down as Secretary in April 2010. We are therefore now looking for someone with energy and ideas to work with the Chairman and Committee in the management of the Club, as Secretary and overall organiser of the dinner meetings and lectures. The main responsibilities are to:

• organise and attend Club meetings, liaising with Imperial College re dates, accommodation and menus, and with speakers;
• organise and attend all Committee meetings, producing papers in consultation with the Chairman and taking the minutes;
• update and consult Committee members on matters which arise between meetings;
• prepare the first draft of the Annual Report, produce the Club Announcements for the Bulletin and contributions for the website; and
• represent BOC at Joint Publications Committee and BOU Meetings Committee when required.

The Club currently holds six meetings a year, usually in London. Committee meetings are held immediately before Club meetings but we are aiming to conduct more of our business by e­mail and reduce the number of formal Committee meetings to a maximum of four per annum. A full job description for the post is available.

Members are reminded that subscriptions are due for renewal on 1 January 2010 and are again respectfully requested to check that any standing orders are correctly lodged with their banks. Subscriptions are £20 per annum irrespective of whether the subscriber is a member of the BOU or not.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Annual General Meeting of the British Ornithologists’ Club was held in the Rector’s Residence, 170 Queens Gate, Imperial College, London, SW7 on Wednesday 29 April 2009 at 6 pm with Cdr. M. B. Casement OBE, RN, in the Chair. Fifteen members were present (including eight from the committee and one ex-officio). Apologies were received from: D. R. Calder, S. P. Dudley G. M. Kirwan, Mrs M. N. Muller, C. W. R. Storey and P. J. Wilkinson.

1. Minutes of previous meeting. The Minutes of the 2008 AGM held on 29 April 2008, which had been published (Bull. Brit. Orn. Cl. 128: 73–75), were approved and signed by the ­Chairman.

2. Chairman’s report. The Chairman delivered his review, which can be read at the start of the Trustees’ Annual Report on pp. 66–67.

3. Trustees Annual Report. The Chairman advised the meeting that the Trustees’ Annual Report and Annual Accounts were again combined in the handout available at the meeting, and confirmed that these would be published in the June issue of the Bulletin. The Hon. Secretary referred members to those sections of the report covering Management, Membership and Activities, and read these aloud. The Hon. Treasurer drew attention to the income and expenditure details (shown on pp. 71–72) of the accounts and summarised the balance sheet (shown on p. 71). He drew attention to the fall in value of investments in line with world financial markets, but was pleased to report an increase in income. The Chairman thanked the Hon. Treasurer for his support and seconded his proposal that the accounts be formally accepted; all those present agreed.

4. The Bulletin. In the absence of the Hon. Editor, the Chairman referred to his report published in the Trustees’ Annual Report, which can be found on p. 69 of this ­issue.

5. Publications report. The Chairman of the BOU–BOC Joint Publications Committee referred to his report published in the Trustees’ Annual Report, which can be found on p. 69 of this issue.

6. Election of Officers and Committee. The Chairman said that the election of Officers was as proposed in the agenda as published in Bull. Brit. Orn. Cl. 129: 1:
(i) Miss H. Baker be elected Chairman (vice Cdr. M. B. Casement, OBE, RN)
(ii) Dr. R. P. Prys-Jones be elected Vice-Chairman (vice Miss H. Baker)
(iii) Mr S. A. H. Statham be re-elected as Hon. Secretary
(iv) Mr D. J. Montier be re-elected as Hon. Treasurer
(v) Three appointments to committee to be made (vice Dr. R. P. Prys-Jones, Dr J. H. Cooper and Mr P. J. Wilkinson) from the following nominations: Mr S. M. S. Gregory, Mr K. Heron Jones and Mr C. W. R. ­Storey
No other changes to the committee are proposed, as all other members are eligible to serve at least one more year in office.
Ex-­officio members (in continuation):
Revd. T. W. Gladwin (Chairman Joint Publications Committee)
Prof. R. A. Cheke (Hon. Publications Officer)
Mr S. P. Dudley (Administration Manager)
Mr G. M. Kirwan (Hon. Editor)
All changes were proposed by Dr C. F. Mann, seconded by Revd. T. W. Gladwin and unanimously agreed by those ­present.

7. Any Other Business. There was no other business and the meeting closed at 6.30 pm.

CHAIRMAN’S REVIEW 2008-09

This is my fourth and, in naval jargon, my “haul-down” report, as your Chairman. My heartfelt thanks are due once again to the many key members of your Committee who have given me loyal support throughout another exceptionally busy year. You will read a summary of their activities recorded in the appropriate sections of the Trustees’ Report, and most will present their reports in person. Chief amongst these must be David Montier, as Hon. Treasurer, who has once again produced a masterly clear set of accounts and successfully managed our resources, despite a severe decline in the value of the Herbert Stevens Fund investments in the current financially difficult year. And my special thanks also go to Tony Statham, Hon. Secretary, for his patience and support to me, for the administration of our Committee meetings and speakers for dinners, and his excellent handling of the administrative arrangements with Imperial College. Having held this post myself (1996-2004), I know he has not found it easy, living with my shadow. Unfortunately Guy Kirwan, Hon. Editor, cannot be with us today, but I wish to record our thanks to him for continuing to produce a high quality Bulletin despite very difficult conditions, often from the depths of somewhere in South America. I can apologise, on his behalf, for errors in the production of a recent issue, but steps have been taken recently to strengthen the Bulletin Sub-committee (BSC) to provide the additional back-up support which he now needs. I am grateful to Nigel Collar for his advice and support as Chairman (BSC), and to Steven Gregory who has now agreed to take on this challenging task, in addition to completing his invaluable work with the scanning project for all Bulletin back-numbers.  

I thank Steve Dudley, once again, for his advice and support for the administration of our membership and subscriptions and his handling of sales of publications; the steady and continuing small decline in membership remains a matter of concern, but is similar to other comparable societies. I thank Tom Gladwin for continuing to chair the BOC-BOU Joint Publications Committee (JPC) and Bob Cheke for his contribution as Commissioning Editor of the publications in the Checklist series; also David Fisher and Eng-Li Green who continue to modernize the BOC website. My thanks are due to each of them for their key roles in managing our affairs. Sadly, your Committee says goodbye to Jo Cooper and Peter Wilkinson on completion of their four-year terms of office.

Our thanks are due to Imperial College for their excellent administrative support and for continuing to allow us very favourable rates, and especially for allowing us the excellent facilities of the Rector’s Residence, at no extra charge, when our normal room in the Sherfield Building has not been available because of re-decoration. The Club’s projector has been put to good use throughout the year, and we are grateful to Pat Sellar and Ron Kettle for their technical skills with the sound equipment.

Two major projects continued to feature prominently in your Committee’s discussions. We have agreed to maintain our grant towards the completion of the international Taxonomic Reference project (REFTAX). We have also agreed to finance for a trial period of two years the continuation of the publication of Systematic Notes on Asian Birds (SNAB), as an item in the Occasional Publications series, under the management of the JPC. The first issue is due to be published later this year.

Three years ago, we set ourselves a vision for the future, and a special meeting was held at NHM, Tring, in February 2007 to review and reform the activities and publications to further the stated charitable aims of this Club in this age of rapidly changing technologies. I hope all will agree that considerable progress has been achieved, but the task is not yet complete, and two targets remain – namely to find successors for our two chief Officers – David Montier as Hon. Treasurer, and Tony Statham as Hon. Secretary. Both have served with commendable dedication and loyalty, and have indicated a desire to retire. I thank them both for their continuing loyalty and support to me.

And finally, my thanks go to Helen Baker who, as my Vice-Chairman, has quietly and conscientiously supported me throughout my term of office and, in handing over to her as my successor, I urge you all to give her your encouragement and support. I wish her every success.

Cdr. M.B. Casement, O.B.E., R.N.

Chairman

29th April 2009

Born on 9 June 1924 in Blora, Java, while still in primary school Jan­Hendrik Becking began to frequent the Bogor Zoological Museum, where P. F. Franck taught him specimen preparation. By his teens he was collecting birds for the museum. Concurrently, he and his brother became friends with the Bartels brothers, Max Jr., Ernst and Hans, all eminent field ornithologists. Max Jr., 22 years his senior, became a mentor to Jan­Hendrik, making birding trips with him to remote parts of Java and permitting free access to the Bartels collection. The publication, in this issue, of his paper on fraudulent use of the Bartels egg collection, was a matter of honour to Jan-Hendrik.

After the war Jan-Hendrik wanted to study zoology in Leiden, The Netherlands, but his coming from ‘the colonies’ proved to be an obstacle. He thus chose botany, which also led him to meet his wife and lifelong supporter, Katharina von Wallwitz. During his professional career based in Wageningen, Jan­Hendrik became an internationally recognised specialist in nitrogen fixation by free-living and symbiotic microorganisms. Four of his contributions appeared in Nature and he was awarded the Pasteur medal by the French Society for Microbiology.

Indonesia, his friends there and its birds remained Jan­Hendrik’s passions. In all he made 12 trips to Java. He possessed a unique combination of excellent observational, recording and analytical skills, dedication to field work (Javan Scops Owl Otus angelinae, Waterfall Swift Hydrochous gigas), a phenomenal ear (owl and cuckoo recordings, and sonograms) and painstaking laboratory skills (ultrastructure of avian egg shells). He wrote the accounts for Asian and Oceanic species in Owls: a guide to the owls of the world (Pica Press). Jan­Hendrik would have loved to exploit further all of the historical and ornithological information in his archives, but it was not to be. A biography of the Bartels family and a checklist of the birds of Java remain part­finished.

Joost ­Brouwer