At the end of this “voting year” Paul Harvey and John Martin will retire from BBRC. They will be difficult to replace after a decade of very hard and often difficult work.
This year we were in the privileged position of having no less than 5 outstanding candidates for the 2 vacant positions, and the result was predictably tight. The election process, ably organised by NewsAcre, was itself a success with 49 counties, bird observatories and recording areas casting the highest number of votes ever in a BBRC election.
The two successful candidates are Chris Batty and Mike Pennington. There are many similarities between the two. Both are ringers, great rarity finders and top birders in every way. Chris will bring a range of important skills and a wealth of knowledge to the committee. He is a local recorder, county report editor and local records committee member but also has an interest in and published extensively on current areas of taxonomic debate . Despite living in one of the most remote corners of the British Isles, on the island of Unst in Shetland, Mike Pennington is a name familiar to many. His list of rarity finds is sickeningly impressive, even given where he has lived for 20 years. He has also edited the Shetland Bird Report since 1998, and has several high quality identification publications to his credit. Chris and Mike are both welcomed to the committee.
We would like to thank all of the other three candidates, Paul Baxter, Mark Chapman and Paul French, all outstanding and worthy nominees in their own right, and BBRC can count itself lucky to have had such a strong card.
