Speaker booked for Lincs Bird Club AGM on March 29.

I certainly hope you can make it, John. You haven't lived until you've been to an LBC annual meeting!

Will you have any difficulties with getting to Whisby?

Incidentally, I see a  resemblance (admittedly slight) between Hudson and van Gogh. They seem to have triangular faces.

He reminds me of my uncle Jim also a man not to be messed with back in the 1940s. I hope I can come to my first ever LBC meeting and see members have never met even though am not always comfortable in groups of people.

Regards 
John

THE radical early twentieth century naturalist W.H.Hudson will be the subject of a talk by guest speaker Conor Jameson at the 2025 annual meeting of Lincolnshire Bird Club.

Hudson was more than a birdwatcher and naturalist - he was a campaigner for their welfare.

While the ornithological community hierarchy mostly turned a blind eye to abuses (or only tut-tutted), he was outspoken in condemning them.

He was sickened by songbird-trapping, egg-collecting and the shooting of birds for taxidermy, for sport or for plumes for ladies' hats.

And he vented his dismay in endless pamphlets, books and letters to the Press.

It made him enemies among the 'experts' of the day, but ultimately it snapped the public out of their indifference and changed public opinion.

Although women have taken the credit for the founding of the Society or the Protection of Birds, later to become the RSPB, Hudson's contribution cannot be underestimated. It is right that his  portrait (see attached photo) should hang at the HQ of the RSPB at The Lodge in Sandy, Bedfordshire.

Jameson is an authority on the great naturalist, and his biography, Finding W.H. Hudson was published last year to much acclaim, not least in a review published in an edition of The Heron, the Lincolnshire Bird Club's monthly newsletter.

The AGM has been set for 2pm on Saturday March 29, 2025 at the Whisby adult education centre, near Lincoln.