Publications
The BOS produce a variety of publications based on our survey work. These include our newsletters, annual and 10 year reports.
Annual Reports
The BOS has published annual reports since 1966. Each report summarises the activities of the society over the year and a review of the bird sightings. Read more ...
Newsletters
The BOS has produced a monthly newsletter since January 1956. All members receive a copy of the newsletter each month. It contains the recent bird sightings and other articles of interest to members. Past newsletters are available to download for each year from the files below. The newsletters have been compiled into an annual report with an index at the beginning so you can quickly locate the newsletter for each month, except for the years 1956-1963 which are only a few pages long. Note that some December and January newsletters have pages omitted where the society's accounts have been removed. The older newsletters have been digitally scanned from the original reports, which in some cases means that the legibility is poor due to the way the originals were reproduced. In most cases it should be possible to perform textual searching within each document, allowing information on specific species to be located, for example. Read more ...
Bird Trends in the Heart of England 1977-2016
This BOS report reviews the population trends of Farmland and Woodland species in south central England compared to the whole of England for the 40 year period 1977 to 2016. Read more ...
Farmland Birds in the Heart of England 2018
The BOS gave a short presentation at the TVERC 2018 Spring Recorder Conference on the state of farmland birds in the BOS. You can view the Microsoft PowerPoint presentation by clicking here: Farmland Birds in the Heart of England 2018.
Birds of the Heart of England
The product of annual surveys since 1952, this book documents remarkable changes in the distribution of many birds through the use of clear colour maps, species accounts and a variety of illustrations. Read more ...
Subcategories
Ten Year Reports
The BOS Ten Year reports summarise the bird sightings and activities of the society in each ten-year period since the society's foundation in 1952. No reports were produced for the periods 1995-2001 or 2002-2011, but this period is covered in the 60-year report Birds of the Heart of England.
Historic Publications
Prior to the foundation of the BOS, bird recording in the local area was carried out by individual naturalists. A key figure is O.V. Aplin, who, in conjunction with family members, compiled the first systematic list of birds of the area now covered by the BOS. Key historic publications used by the BOS are listed here. These publications are still important since they provide evidence on the abundance and distribution of species at that time. We can use this information to help understand the changes in the populations of the species within our area.
The BOS Curlew Recovery Project
UK currently holds approximately a quarter of the global Curlew population, with estimates for England of about 30,000 pairs. National monitoring data show that this population has been in long-term decline since the 1970s and has almost halved in the UK over the last 20 years. In lowland southern England, the population has declined to about 500 pairs, with many colonies on the verge of local extinction. Read more ...
9 February 2026 - Meeting via Zoom @ 7.30pm
Great Black-backed Gulls: from populations to individuals - Sam Langlois from BTO Scotland
The Great Black-backed Gull is one of the North Atlantic’s most conspicuous and largest seabirds — yet much of its ecology remains poorly understood. This talk will present new insights into global population trends and foraging ecology, focusing on diet and GPS tracking studies undertaken on the Isle of May, Scotland. Read more ...
Short day count: 3 or 4 January 2026
Our annual winter count, carried out by teams of observers in each of the twelve 10km square, to record the number of bird species seen between 8am and 4pm. Read more ...