My thanks to Angus Hogg and Jamie McPike for sending in some photos for the Photo Gallery. I’ve posted a selection here to tempt you.

My thanks to Angus Hogg, Jamie McPike, Bob Ross and Fred Westcott for sending in some photos for the Photo Gallery. I’ve posted a selection here to tempt you.

It seems very odd to talk about Winter meetings in this decent Summer weather but the programmes for the Ayrshire branches of the SOC and SWT have now been posted on the Events page.

Update 16-Aug: I’ve just received the programme for the RSPB Central Ayrshire group and their joint outdoor programme with the Ayrshire SOC Group.  Tony Scott has also sent in this summer’s issue of the “Gannet” in two parts.

Update 1-Sep: Tony Scott has also sent in this summer’s issue of the Stonechat.

My thanks to Angus Hogg and Dave Grant for sending in some photos for the Photo Gallery. Angus also managed to get another photo onto the Ayrshire Species List with his picture of Sand Martin. However, to prove that this site isn’t just interested in the common-place stuff, Angus’s series of pictures of a Common Rosefinch that turned up in his garden also made the cut! This was only the third record for Ayrshire for this species. The Editor’s comment: “What’s wrong with my garden?” Dave’s photos mostly came from his PhD field-work on Lady Isle: I’ve include the juvenile Shags because they almost look cute.

My thanks to Angus Hogg and Jamie McPike for sending in some photos for the Photo Gallery. Angus also managed to get two photos onto the Ayrshire Species List with his picture of Long-tailed Skuas and a White Wagtail (OK, it’s a sub-species – but that excites some weird people). However, Jamie didn’t miss out as his Garganey picture replaced the previous entry: standards just keep getting better. (As always, the Editor’s decision is final: bribes are accepted though.)

The 2011 Ayrshire Bird Report has now been published. The list of contents can be found here, with details of where to get a copy.

My thanks to Angus Hogg and Dave Grant for sending in some photos for the Photo Gallery. I’ve also included (yet another) Waxwing photo I took using my phone just to show what is now possible.

The February 2013 issue of Stonechat, the club newsletter of the Ayrshire Branch of the SOC is now available: click here to download it .  The Editor, Tony Scott, would like to mention that there are still a couple of places available on the Raptor Migration (to Southern Spain) trip in September: full details are in the itinerary .

As you may know, this website has been going since June 2000, and so is one of the oldest, continually updated local birding web-sites on the web. Over the years it has built up a collection of useful information and it seemed like a good idea to preserve it.  The British Library has a project called UK Web Archive and as they say:

“There are millions of UK websites. They are constantly changing and even disappearing. Often they contain information that is only available online. Responding to the challenge of a potential “digital black hole” the UK Web Archive is there to safeguard as many of these websites as practical. Its purpose is to collect, preserve and give permanent access to key UK websites for future generations.”

The Ayrshire Birding web site is about to be added to this archive, so you can now rest easy knowing that all this stuff will be available for your descendants to peruse.