Indoor Meetings Programme: October 2018 – April 2019

********AGM - Saturday 5th January 2019******

2pm for 2.15pm in the Elwin Room, at the BRLSI

Evening Meetings at the BRLSI. Doors open at 7 pm for 7.30 pm start

Monday 1st October 2018 – Peter Marren - ‘Chasing plants. The pursuit of our native and established wild flowers: pleasure, pain and the unattainable’

Peter Marren aka ‘Twitcher in the Swamp’ (British Wildlife) is a prolific and well-known author and journalist, whose works include ‘Chasing the Ghost’ (the subject of this talk), ‘Bugs Britannica’, ‘Rainbow Dust’ and ‘Where the Wild Thyme Blew. 

Tuesday 6th November 2018 – John Bebbington FRPS - ‘Identity Theft – Mimicry in Insects’

From a very early age John has been fascinated by insects, particularly lepidoptera, and their behaviour. More recently he has looked at the strategies used by insects to avoid predation, and will be illustrating and discussing these in his talk.

Monday 3rd December 2018 – Dr Tim Rich - ‘Collecting seeds for the Millennium Seed Bank the difficult way’ 

Dr Tim Rich is a well-known botanist with particular interests in apomictic groups such as hawkweeds and whitebeams. During 2016 and 2017, he collected seeds of difficult plants such as hawkweeds and dandelions for the Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The talk describes some of the ups and downs of the work and asks who is responsible for conserving some of our rarest endemics.   

Tuesday 5th February 2019 – Professor Matthew Wills - tba

Monday 4th March 2019 – Lydia Blake - ‘Greener Greenways- Wildlife on the National Cycle Network’

Lydia has a background in urban conservation and nature reserve management, and joined Sustrans in September 2017 having worked for London Wildlife Trust and Thames Water for several years. Sustrans is the organisation making it easier for people to walk and cycle, and we founded the National Cycle Network, 14,000 miles of traffic free path and quiet roads that criss-cross the country. Greener Greenways is a project looking to conserve, record and enhance biodiversity and habitats on our traffic free routes so the routes function as ecological corridors and networks able to connect wildlife as well as people. Lydia will talk about the project on a national and local scale, and about the local Greener Greenways of the Bristol and Bath Railway Path, Bath Two Tunnels and Colliers Ways routes

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 – Mike Bailey - ‘Keeping Track of Bird Life’

Mike has been bird-ringing, mostly at Chew Valley Lake, for 40 years. Here he brings his rich depth of experience to bear on a discussion of developments in bird ringing from the use of Heligoland traps to the arrival of mist nets to the use of various tracking methods and genetic analysis.

Afternoon Workshops at the BRLSI from 2pm to 4pm (N.B. NEW VENUE)

Tuesday 13th November 2018: Wildlife Recording: Rob Randall

This workshop will serve as the official launch of the Bath Wildlife database and provide a demonstration of how to enter records and photographs. Rob will also explain what happens in the background, and what volunteer effort is required to ensure it is maintained and regularly updated.

Tuesday 15th January 2019: Bryophyte Ecology: Marion and Alan Rayner

Different habitats can (to some extent) be home to predictable suites of moss and liverwort species which can help greatly when learning to identify these intriguing plants. So for this workshop we will be considering some common local habitats such as trees, dry stone walls, limestone grassland, woodland banks, lawns, tarmac etc and looking at what we can expect to find there. Bring a hand lens if you have one. If you bring specimens please make a note what habitat they were growing in.