Following the request for nominations for BBRC membership published in the autumn, BBRC are pleased to announce that there will be an election for the new member for 2002.County records and bird observatory records committees vote in the election that will take place in mid-January and we will announce the results in early February. We will be sending details of the voting to all county recorders and observatory wardens. If you are part of the records committee, please make sure your views are known about who you think should be on BBRC. Each county has five votes and each observatory three, so it is that all views can be expressed.
The two nominees are John Sweeney and Martin Grey, both birders of the highest calibre with a sound working knowledge of Scotland. Both are enthusiastic supporters of BBRC, provide descriptions of the highest quality when submitting records and are widely acknowledged to be at the forefront of modern birding.
John Sweeney is the BBRC nominee for this year. He is 40 and, although he has lived all his life in Scotland, as an active member of the twitching scene in the 1980’s, has visited nearly every part of the British Isles and most of the bird observatories. He is well known by many birders in mainland Scotland and, despite living in southwest Scotland, still manages to find large numbers of rare birds. His best finds include Black Duck, Baird’s Sandpiper, Thrush Nightingale and three Yellow-breasted Buntings. He has travelled extensively in the USA, Europe and North Africa, has been a ringer for 15 years, a member of the Clyde records panel for 5 years and has published on identification, distribution and other birding topics.
Martin is 36 and was born and still lives on Orkney. He lived in Northern Ireland for several years before returning to Orkney and, ultimately, North Ronaldsay. He has travelled extensively in North America, Europe and the Middle East where he spent three months in Saudi Arabia monitoring passage shorebirds and trapping passerine migrants along the Gulf Coast. He has been a member Scottish Birds Records Committee from January 1999, a joint compiler Orkney Bird Report from 1998 and an identification consultant to Birding Scotland from 2000. He has published various papers on identification and occurrence of rare birds Memorable finds have included Isabelline Shrike, Pine Bunting and Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler. He has been nominated by Eric Meek, the chairman of BOURC and seconded by Dr Kevin Woodbridge
