For many years, the Club has held monthly indoor meetings during the winter months. They are typically illustrated talks featuring a prominent local or national speaker followed by a discussion.
For the Winter season of 2024/25 we have arranged an interesting programme of talks, presented jointly with the North Norfolk Group of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.
The meetings are open to all, you don’t need to be a member of either the NWT or Cley Bird Club, but membership details will be available if you wish to join.
There is a small admission fee, which includes refreshments. Any surplus revenue from the meetings goes to support Cley Bird Reserve. No booking is required.
Unless otherwise stated, all meetings start at 7.30pm and take place in the main hall at Cley Village Hall (NR25 7RJ) which is on Fairstead in Cley. There is ample car parking on site, but a torch is useful for the walk to and from the hall. Grid Ref: TG 047 437 W3W: writings.minivans.regard …or click here for a map.
Seabirds are amongst the most globally-threatened of all birds. In this talk Richard Phillips, a seabird biologist with the British Antarctic Survey, will provide an overview of the main threats to seabirds, including fisheries, invasive species and climate change. He will also describe how research on their distribution and behaviour can help us understand the drivers of population change and prioritise management efforts to improve their conservation. Richard is a world expert on seabird distribution at sea, and this promises to be a most informative evening.
Please note that the talk will be preceded by our Annual General Meeting, which will hopefully be a fairly brief affair. Generously sponsored by Cley Spy
One thousand shades of green: a year in search of Britain’s wild plants
Date:10/12/2024
Time:7:30 - 9:30 pm
Venue:Cley Village Hall
Cost:£5 entrance (note the increase for this special Christmas event); refreshments will be served
Naturalist and TV Presenter Mike Dilger is on a mission to see a thousand different wild plants in one calendar year. Having been confined to barracks by the Covid pandemic, and with daily dog walks his sole permitted outdoor pursuit, the simple pleasure of getting to know the flowers at his feet inspired a project that ultimately took him from Cornwall to Kent, and Breckland to the Highlands of Scotland. Taking in city centres, mountain tops and every conceivable habitat in between, Mike’s big botanical year was not just an opportunity to celebrate the beauty, diversity and rarity of the nation’s plants, but also to assess how our fascinating flora is faring in modern Britain. Mike will also bring his famed enthusiasm for the natural world to our pre-Christmas talk, and promises to royally entertain you for this very special evening.
Note the change from the normal Thursday to Tuesday, and an increase in entrance fee to £5 for this special Christmas event; refreshments will be served.
Generously sponsored by Lynton Wines
Cape ‘Maygration’ – enjoying wildlife at a world migration hotspot
Date:16/01/2025
Time:7:30 - 9:30 pm
Venue:Cley Village Hall
Cost:£3 entrance; refreshments will be served
Local birder, naturalist and tour leader Mike Crewe will be known to many. Now resident in North Norfolk, for six years he was Programme Director at Cape May Bird Observatory, one of the best places in the world to experience bird migration. In this talk he will introduce us to the delights of watching warblers, vireos and other charismatic birds as they migrate along the eastern seaboard of America. Generously sponsored by David Ford Books
A wilder Norfolk for all, and how we make it happen
Date:20/02/2025
Time:19:30 - 21:30
Venue:Cley Village Hall
Cost:£3 entrance; refreshments will be served
Eliot Lyne is the new CEO of Norfolk Wildlife Trust. In September 2023 NWT launched ‘A wilder Norfolk for all’, its strategy for Nature’s Recovery which will guide their work up until 2030, and beyond. Eliot will discuss NWT’s vision and mission for the future of Norfolk’s wildlife, recognising the importance of involving everyone. Generously sponsored by Bird Ventures
Blakeney Point to Wicken Fen – tales of a wildlife ranger
Date:20/03/2025
Time:7:30 - 9:30pm
Venue:Cley Village Hall
Cost:£3 entrance; refreshments will be served
Ajay Tegala will be known to many in North Norfolk from his time as ranger at Blakeney Point, and from his writing and TV appearances. He currently works at Wicken Fen alongside 115 Konik ponies and 45 Highland cattle. He will share stories and pictures from his career in nature conservation. This will be an open and honest look at life on two of East Anglia’s oldest nature reserves; the subject of his recent books. Generously sponsored by BirdScapes Gallery
Previous meetings this winter
Curlews In Breckland – 17th October 2024
Many of his 50 listeners could have been grandparents of the BTO’s Harry Ewing but anyone who can find and monitor 204 Curlew nests commands instant respect. A shocking 135 of them failed, overwhelmingly due to predation, and what Harry called the ‘sticking plaster’ of predator control or deterrence seems essential for waders to sustain populations in the degraded habitat we’ve bequeathed them. The real answer of course is to restore fully functioning heterogeneous ecosystems without mesopredator release and on landscape scale, but Harry and his colleagues in the Curlew Recovery Partnership have practical heads on young shoulders. I’ve rarely heard such an elegant, succinct exposition of how we might actually conserve a real bird in the real world, delivered with warmth and common sense that must endear Harry to the landowners whose help is vital.
Electric fences around nests increased hatching from 20% to 90%. A mixture of vegetation heights is key with tall grass especially scarce in Breckland. Nests in arable crops hatch surprisingly well but the chicks must then immediately find grassland for feeding and cover so rewilding low-value arable patches can treble chick survival. Breeding Curlew don’t probe marshes, they depend on grassland invertebrates so their productivity is tightly coupled to human activity. Once fledged their survival is good and not presently declining, especially as hunting is now illegal in France.
All the Numenius are threatened, two are probably extinct and ours is heading that way but this was no celebrity talk – Harry Ewing walks the walk for Curlew and from experience he left plenty of time to give thoughtful answers to a raft of serious questions from an intrigued audience. His impressive presentation was kindly sponsored by Van der L Feeds.
Breckland Curlews are colour-ringed with (top down) Blue-Orange-White or Green-Orange-White on the left tarsus (other colours on tibiae) and can be reported directly to harry.ewing@bto.org
