The UK is fortunate in having a great tradition of local bird clubs and natural history societies. These play an important role in engaging bird watchers and helping them to develop their field skills. Many clubs, for example, produce county reports and undertake regional surveys in addition to contributing large amounts of information to BTO national surveys such as Bird Atlas 2007-11. BTO recognises the important role these clubs and societies play and encourages their members to support their local bird club.

BTO Bird Club Partnership

The Bird Club Partnership is open to any bird club, so if you aren't a partner and would like to join, please contact Ieuan Evans by email ieuan.evans@bto.org with your club's name and the name and contact details of the person who will be the main point of contact.

• It's free to join and you will receive our member magazine, BTO News, and enjoy free advertising for your annual bird reports. We are also happy, where possible, to provide speakers at bird club meetings and help organise regional events. Please see our full list of benefits.

History

The BTO Bird Clubs Partnership was originally conceived in 1987 with the aim of establishing a relationship between the BTO and bird clubs and similar organisations which would offer mutual benefits.

Partnership objectives

The objectives of the BTO and of Britain’s bird clubs could be summarised as ‘promoting the study and appreciation of birds to enhance their conservation’. For the BTO these activities take place on a national scale, whilst for bird clubs they are conducted locally or regionally.

This is achieved through a variety of activities at all levels: surveys and monitoring programmes to keep track of our bird populations; conferences and meetings to develop and share ideas; and newsletters and journals to keep members informed of activities and to report results.

We would hope that through the partnership, we can feed information back to you about our surveys at a national and local level and promote a greater interest in the status of our birdlife. We aim to make the partnership accessible to clubs of all sizes by not charging a membership fee.

Benefits to your bird club

BTO News

Your club will receive a copy of each issue of our members’ magazine, BTO News. The magazine contains the latest results from our research and surveys, and we would encourage you to extract information to use in your own newsletters. If you make contact with your BTO Regional Representative, it should be possible to have some regional results made available for use in your newsletters.

Annual BTO Bird Clubs Partnership Newsletter

You will receive an annual newsletter to keep you up to date with our surveys and activities, written with specific relevance to bird clubs, as well as to let you know about any other information we have which may be of interest. A number of your members may already be taking part in our short-term and long-term surveys, helping to gather vital data about the UK's birds. We would hope that with your support, we could encourage even more to participate.

BTO website

We are very happy to feature your club on our website with links through to your club page.

Joint conferences

We actively encourage and support joint BTO Bird Club conferences. We can help both financially and practically e.g. with bookings, but it is important that there is some degree of BTO involvement, usually BTO speakers. Any joint BTO Bird Club conference planning must involve BTO Membership staff at an early stage.

Annual Report advert

We will put a brief advert into BTO News free of charge. To enable us to do this, please ensure that you include details of price (including postage and packing) and full contact details. These details should be sent with a review copy of the report addressed to The Librarian at BTO and will be stocked in the Chris Mead Library.

BTO contact

Please make useful contact with the BTO Regional Representative or Assistant Regional Representative and/or Regional Development Officer for your area. We encourage our Regional Network to actively promote their local bird clubs to BTO members. You may already know them, and they may already be an active member of your club.

In return

We hope that Bird Clubs Partnership members will be willing to encourage their own members to take part in our surveys and to promote the BTO through your newsletters and at your meetings. Please also mention and link to this page from your club website to help spread the word and encourage more activity between both our organisations.