Banbury Ornithological Society

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.

There was no newsletter for September 1957
Newsletter #79 August 1962 is missing
There are some errors in the numbering of the newsletters, such as there being two issues numbered 605 and there being no #85
In the 1960s some months had supplementary newsletters with their own issue number
The February 2008 issue #632 says "January 2008" at the top of each page

The newsletters have also been compiled into compendiums for each decade. This makes it easier to download the entire collection of newsletters. See this page for the compendium files: Newsletter Compendiums.

Sean Woodcock, MP for Banbury visited the BOS reserve at Balscote Quarry recently, to see conservation in action. Steve Holliday, one of the site wardens said, “Balscote may be a small site (6ha) but, through positive management, it holds Red List birds such as Lapwing and Yellowhammer, 24 species of butterfly and much more." We looked at the vital role volunteers play in habitat management on site and, in light of BOS data on local bird declines, how we can develop a more joined-up approach to nature conservation locally. We finished by discussing how new proposals in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill can benefit, not harm, biodiversity.

The Gambia - Richard Hall

Richard has visited The Gambia a couple of times and will explore the different habitats and regions of The Gambia as well as giving us some ideas of what birds are likely to be seen.

The Long Day Count is carried out by teams of observers in each of the twelve 10km squares recording the number of bird species seen during a maximum of 12 daylight hours on the second Sunday in May each year. Read more ...

Newsletters

Sean Woodcock MP visits Balscote Quarry

13 April 2026 - Indoor Meeting at 7.30pm

Long Day Count: 2 or 3 May 2026