About the
British Trust for Ornithology

Historical Background

In 1931 Max Nicholson wrote about the potential of co-operative birdwatching to inform the conservation debate in his book The Art of Bird-Watching (E.M.Nicholson, Witherby). He added: “In the United States, Hungary, Holland and elsewhere a clearing-house for research is provided by the state: in this country such a solution would be uncongenial, and we must look for some alternative centre of national scope not imposed from above but built up from below. An experiment on these lines has been undertaken at Oxford since the founding of the Oxford Bird Census in 1927 […]. The scheme now has a full-time director, Mr W.B.Alexander […]. It is intended to put this undertaking on a permanent footing and to build it up as a clearing-house for bird-watching results in this country.”

A meeting of prominent ornithologists held at the British Museum (Natural History) in February 1932 inaugurated a new national organisation to support the Oxford scheme. In May 1933 the name ‘British Trust for Ornithology’ was chosen and an appeal was launched in The Times on July 1^st of that year with Max Nicholson as treasurer and Bernard Tucker as secretary. In 1938 the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology was founded, the BTO providing most of its income. At the end of the war, Oxford University increased its grant to the Institute and in 1947 it became part of a new department of Zoological Field Studies, freeing the BTO to concentrate on developing its programme of volunteer-based investigations. Click here to read an interesting account (Microsoft Word format) of the early years of the Trust, written in 1953 by James Fisher.

On December 4^th 1962 the BTO purchased Beech Grove, a Victorian House in Tring, Hertfordshire. The main office was moved from Oxford and the Ringing Office from the British Museum (Natural History) in London who had generously accommodated it rent-free until the scheme outgrew the available space.

A major step was taken in September 1967 when a working group was appointed to instigate the first Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland, in partnership with the Irish Wildbird Conservancy (now BirdWatch Ireland). 3,862 10km squares were surveyed and this landmark book was finally published in 1976. The New Atlas (1993) updated and refined this huge survey, again with the help of IWC and the Scottish Ornithologists Club. A Winter Atlas and a Historical Atlas have also been published and the groundbreaking Migration Atlas is now available. Work on the next distribution atlas has already started and will iinclude, for the first time, both breeding and winter distribution and abundance.

Having outgrown Beech Grove, the BTO moved to Thetford in April 1991.

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