Sadly, with the start of another lockdown, we must cancel our Bath Nats events for the foreseeable future. Hopefully some of the events planned for later in the Spring will still be able to go ahead, but we will review this as conditions change.
Bath Natural History Society
BATH NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY – Registered Charity No. 1107468
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Welcome to our new Bath Nats website from the President Professor David Goode
Do come and join us in “Exploring Nature within and around Bath!”
Whether you are visiting this site as an onlooker, member or prospective member of our Society, we hope you will enjoy and be excited by the descriptions and illustrations of our diverse interests, activities and expertise. We are a relatively small Natural History Society, which relies on the enthusiasm, voluntary efforts and skills of its membership, so newcomers – of all ages and from all kinds of background are always very welcome.
We think that ‘natural history’ is important for everyone, not just a select few. The natural world is made up of many different kinds of animals and plants, and it takes all kinds of people to appreciate them, from different points of view and in different ways. So, if you find pleasure in exploring any aspect of nature, especially in the Bath area, perhaps you would like to join us as a really great way to share and learn more.
Since I came to live in Bath I have found that the city and its surroundings support a great variety of wildlife. Among my particular favorites are meadows full of orchids around the skyline walk; a huge colony of ivy mining bees that have recently colonized sandy banks near the Pavilion Restaurant in Victoria Park; a night time roost of up to 300 pied wagtails in the solitary tree in Southgate shopping centre; and perhaps best of all the pair of Peregrine Falcons that nest on the spire of St John’s church in the city centre. Unseen by many people, they are for me an important link with the natural world that can bring enjoyment, stimulation and a sense of wonder.
By joining in with us, you too might be surprised and inspired by the variety of life that can be found almost anywhere in and around Bath, with a little knowledge of where to look, how to look and what to look for. Over the past few years some of our members have regularly visited the tiny cemetery at Smallcombe to find out what lives there. The results have been astonishing. So far they’ve seen over 700 species including 55 kinds of moths, many other insects, over 44 common bird species, around 144 kinds of flowering plants including some quite rare species, and over 100 species of lichens. All this occurs within a short walk from the city centre. The canal too is rich in species. Around 15 dragonfly species can be seen along the towpath between Bath and Bradford on Avon. Kingfishers can frequently be seen and if you are lucky you might even see an otter on the canal or along the River Avon. Delightful mosses, liverworts, lichens and all manner of ‘creepy crawlies’ abound on and in our stone walls and in our local woodlands – not to mention fungi, a passion for some of our members. Fungal forays are remarkably popular. We are also discovering, by light trapping (and releasing), the wide range of moth species which inhabit Bath’s urban and sub-urban areas, including some of the strikingly beautiful hawk moths.
We are especially keen to work in partnership with other local educational groups and organizations who share our interest in and concern for the natural world, and to find ways of reaching out to members of the wider public, including young people and families. When you join us, you don’t just get a chance to attend our own varied programme of outdoor and indoor meetings, and receive our Magazine, Newsletter and other publications – you also get to know about what our partners and friends are doing and how to join in with them.
You are very welcome!
About Us
Objectives and Contribution
The main purpose of Bath Natural History Society, as described in our Constitution, is to study and enjoy all aspects of the natural world and to furnish detailed records of species distribution and numbers within the Bath area to the Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre (BRERC). These data are then available for access by a variety of agencies and can be used to assist in the development of a wildlife conservation strategy as well as being of value in determining the natural richness of sites when under consideration for development.
Activities
• Field trips – usually two or more per month.
• Indoor meetings – monthly from September through to April.
• Survey work – site visits to record specific wildlife groups.
• Members’ slides and social evenings.
• Education – providing lecturers to speak to external organisations.
• Wildlife identification.
• Meetings to enable the public to participate in Nats’ activities.
Join in
If this sounds interesting to you, come and join us!
To download Constitution Council Members SafeGuarding Policy Membership form

Take a walk with BathNats
When it’s not possible to join a field trip, explore nature round Bath with a self-guided walk. Lucy Starling is your guide.

How To Join Bath Nats
To join us, come along to one of our indoor meetings, email us or download an application form
A programme of our field trips is available to all members.
The annual subscription is as follows:
• Single membership…….. £8.00
• Family membership….. £12.00
• Student membership….. £4.00
You can download an application form to join us here
Admission for indoor meetings is £2 for members and £4 for visitors.
Admission to the social evening and to the AGM is free.
Study Groups
‘Study Groups’ (SGs) are intended to augment the main Field Programme by enabling members of the Society to enhance their knowledge and confidence in studying particular aspects of natural history and to encourage recording.
Their meetings are arranged and notified separately to their members by their respective leaders, as and when appropriate. Members who wish to join an SG are asked to contact the leader(s) of that group.
Current SGs are as follows: Moths (Paul Wilkins, Peter Shirley and Geoff Hiscocks); Biodiversity (Alan Feest and Alan Rayner).

Chew Valley Lake, 8 December 2019
Leader: Terry Doman Four members joined the leader for a day at Chew Valley Lake. We met at Herriot’s bridge on a cold and windy day with the threat of rain. The water levels were high due to the recent weeks of rain. There was the possibility of a rare American Green...
Friary Fungi Day, Hinton Charterhouse, 31 October 2019
On a bright but slightly overcast morning of Wednesday 30th October a group of around 18 members plus several visitors gathered in the classroom at Friary, Hinton Charterhouse, by kind invitation of Penny and Richard Williamson, and were treated first of all to coffee...
Harridge Woods, Somerset, 19 October 2019
A dozen of us gathered for this meeting on what was to turn out to be a mostly dry, bright Autumn day with sunlight sifting down at times through the tree canopy to dapple the ground below. From the reserve entrance we made our way down to the petrifying stream marked...
Lansdown, Bath 9 October 2019
Leaders: Alice and John Nissen Ten of us met on what threatened to be a hopelessly wet day at the golf course carpark (with permission) on Lansdown. We decided to shorten our route, leaving out the planned start which had been to skirt Weston Wood and dip down into...
Greyfield Wood 25 September 2019
A group of thirteen of us gathered for this meeting on a day that was to prove to be mostly dry, mild and dappled with sunshine. And, as on previous visits, we had a fungal treat in store for us despite the long dry spell that had preceded the meeting. We started with...
Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall 28 August 2019
Leader Lucy Delve Ten members and one non-member joined me at 10am in Ham Wall RSPB car park and we promptly headed towards Noah’s Hide, Shapwick Heath where the adult Osprey was located, for, possibly, the 11th or 12th consecutive year. It is commonly referred to as...
Bathampton Meadows, nr Bath 9 June 2019
Thanks to all who turned out on an overcast but warm day,credit must be given to Peter Fear and his team for keeping the riverside path as wildlife friendly as possible.We took a steady walk along the river path and then on to the private nature reserve with plenty to...
Wildlife Recording Visit to the American Museum 26 April 2019
A group of 14 of us gathered in the car park of the American Museum on a sunny, mild morning, and were joined by the Head Gardener, Andrew Cannell and Matt Postles from the Bristol Natural History Consortium, who told us about the purpose of the international ‘City...
Birdwatching at Slimbridge WWT, 6th February 2019
By 10AM, when thirteen of us met at Slimbridge WWT, the early mist had given way to sunshine. Entry formalities over, we headed out to the Holden Tower, from which to view both Tack Piece and the Severn Estuary foreshore. Arriving shortly after a high tide ensured...
Carrs Woodland LNR Thursday, 31 January 2019
On a bitterly cold winter’s day, twenty members met to explore this small Local Nature Reserve in Twerton, which includes woodland, grassland and a small stretch of the Newton Brook and was designated in 2006 as an “urban fringe” LNR. After admiring the frosted...
National Links
- RSPB www.rspb.org.uk
- Natural England www.naturalengland.org.uk
- National Trust www.nationaltrust.org.uk
- Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust www.wwt.org.uk
- Butterfly Conservation www.butterfly-conservation.org
- British Dragonfly Society www.dragonflysoc.org.uk
- UK Moths www.ukmoths.org.uk
- Froglife www.froglife.org
- Wild About Britain www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk
- UK Butterflies www.ukbutterflies.co.uk
- The Great Crane Project www.thegreatcraneproject.org.uk
- Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland www.bsbi.org.uk
Local Links
- Bath peregrines nest cam (Hawk & Owl Trust) hawkandowltrust.org/web-cam-live/bath-1
- Avon Wildlife Trust www.avonwildlifetrust.org.uk
- Wiltshire Wildlife Trust www.wiltshirewildlife.org
- Somerset Wildlife Trust www.somersetwildlife.org
- Gloucester Wildlife Trust www.gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk
- Cotswold Fungus Group www.cotswoldfungusgroup.com
- Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre www.brerc.org.uk
- CVL Birding www.cvlbirding.co.uk
- Severnside Birds www.severnsidebirds.co.uk
- Somerset Birds www.somersetbirds.net
- Bristol Naturalists Society www.bristolnats.org.uk
- Bristol Ornithology Club www.boc-bristol.org.uk
- The Birds of South Gloucestershire www.thebirdsofsouthgloucestershire.co.uk
- Wiltshire Birds www.wiltshirebirds.co.uk
- Chew Valley Ringing Station www.chewvalleyringingstation.co.uk
- Elm Farm www.elm-farm.com
- Blagdon Lake Birds www.blagdonlakebirds.com
- Somerset Rare Plants Group www.somersetrareplantsgroup.org.uk
Get In Touch!
Please use the contact form here
BATH NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY
Registered Charity No. 1107468
In memoriam
Tributes to past members
Professor Desmond Thomas Donovan 1921-2019
We are sad to learn that Professor Donovan died on 23rd December 2019 after a short illness. Members of the Society will know him as one of our Honorary Members. In fact he was one of the Founder Members of our Society in 1941 as an undergraduate studying Geology at the University of Bristol. He had a distinguished career as an academic geologist, first as a lecturer at the University of Bristol, then in 1962 Professor of Geology at the University of Hull, after which he became the Yates Goldsmid Professor of Geology at University College London from 1966 to 1982. After that he returned to the West Country and became Hon. Curator of the Wells Museum from 1982-85 and has lived in Wells since then. His main speciality has been in the field of palaeontology, particularly Jurassic cephalopods, a subject in which he made a massive contribution to our knowledge and understanding.
As one of his former students, I was pleased to receive a letter from him last year in which he congratulated the Bath Nats on our activities saying, “it seems to flourish and the annual magazine is excellent”. It was a nice tribute from a founder member after eighty years! He told me he was, “still doing some geology and had a couple of papers in preparation!”
The Society is greatly indebted to Professor Donovan for his foresight as one of our founder members.
David Goode
Alan Barrett 1937-2020
Our dear friend Alan Barrett died in February 2020 aged 82. Alan and Gillian joined the Society in about 1991 shortly after moving to Bath from Great Bookham in Surrey. Alan brought with him a considerable knowledge of birds, and a developing interest in insects. Gillian tells me that Jean Matthews, who was then Dragonfly Recorder, took him under her wing and he became very interested in dragonflies. Eventually he took over from Jean as Dragonfly Recorder for the Society. He gave several talks to the Bath Nats and led trips to help people identify dragonflies. One of Alan’s favourite places locally was the ox-bow wetland at Bathampton Meadows. He became the warden of the nature reserve run by the Avon Wildlife Trust and often took members of the Skills Improvement Group there.
Alan also became interested in Grasshoppers and Crickets and became the Recorder for these too. He went with Gillian on a residential course on Grasshoppers and Crickets at Kingcombe Field Study Centre in Dorset which stimulated his interest even further. All the records from the ‘SIGs’ were sent to BRERC in Bristol.
Over the years Alan has been central to the development of the Society. Whilst on Council he played an important part in writing the Constitution when we were about to become registered as a charity. All this was done in parallel with his other great interest which was birds. He has given enormous support to the Local Group of the RSPB in Bath over many years. In 1998 he became Indoor Meeting Secretary and in 2003 became Group Leader, a position that he held for ten years. Alan kept abreast of the changing fortunes of birds in Widcombe, and particularly in their own garden where Alan and Gillian have recorded nearly fifty species.
I shall always remember him as a great enthusiast, who was always willing to spend time explaining the detailed characters of a particular bush cricket or long-winged conehead. He had a great knack using a bat detector for identifying stridulating insects. But above all it was his welcoming friendliness that I shall miss.
David Goode
Tom Cairns 1949-2017

Tom Cairns 1949-2017
Ole Thomas Cairns was born on 8th June 1949 in Germany to his Norwegian mother and Northern Ireland-born father.
The family moved to Northern Ireland, then to Norfolk and later to Lower Swainswick, near Bath. It was in the local primary here that he gained his passionate love of nature and the countryside which stayed with him so strongly all his life.
After school he took a BSc Course at Bath, and became involved in conservation whilst working for the Bath Preservation Trust, saving a row of Georgian workers’ cottages from demolition by the less than enthusiastic City Council.
Return visits to Norway furthered his love of nature and he would go for solo walks out into the wild.
He took one of the first Master’s degrees in conservation and commuted from his house in Widcombe to Westminster where he advised the Government on the Wildlife and Countryside Act, a major piece of legislation. Other positions included project managing the Albert Dock in Liverpool whilst working for the Civic Trust.
Moving to Devizes he took up a post with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, an organisation with which he became involved to the end, and where he made so many good friends.
He also worked for the Grazing Advisory Partnership based in Brinkworth, Wiltshire, organising a body including the Ministry of Defence, National Trust and Rare Breeds Survival Trust, the aim of which being the use of cattle native to the specific areas involved, to maintain the fragile ecosystem which was at risk from invasive or over-dominant species such as bracken. This is now standard practice.
In 2012, having taken up a new job in Lincolnshire, managing schemes to maintain salt marshes using native breeds, he collapsed at work and was rushed to hospital. Tests revealed that he had suffered a heart attack having contracted a disease of the heart muscle. The condition was so serious that he had to retire from work and return to his beloved Devizes. He fully recovered and made a point of enjoying life to the full.
In 2015, he was seriously injured in a road traffic accident and taken to Southmead Hospital, Bristol, where it was feared he would lose his leg. In a major operation the leg was saved.
Whilst recovering he suffered a severe flu-like illness; polymyalgia was diagnosed. Some months later tests showed that he had cancer, the illness from which he finally succumbed.
All the while Tom maintained his social life and was a great inspiration to friends and colleagues, who will continue to have happy memories of Tom.
Here are three such memories.
From Dave Green
In February 1978, Tom invited my heavily pregnant wife Ali and me to have a curry at his third-floor flat in Lansdown, Bath. We had known Tom by this time a couple years, and I knew he had photographed many flower species. Tom intended, after a leisurely meal, to show us slides of some of his flower pictures. However, as we ate, Ali was getting contractions, but didn’t say anything at the time, or when Tom and I got engrossed in the slideshow. Eventually she mentioned that contractions were coming at three-minute intervals, and perhaps we ought to go off to the hospital. This created a dilemma for Tom and me, because we were just getting to the slides of the frog orchid, which at that time I had never seen. Ali was insistent that we HAD to go, so Tom helpfully rattled through the slides at speed so that I could get a view of the plant before helping Ali shuffle down six flights of stairs. All went well and the following day the first visitor to the side of Ali’s bed was Tom with a bunch of flowers.
I have below included a photo that Tom took of the Ghost Orchid in 1978/9, one of the last times it was seen in Britain, my memory is of waiting by the car with Rob Randall until Tom ran out of film taking pictures whilst laid prone on the floor of Beech woodland, “somewhere in Southern England.
From Paul Derby
Tom had more jobs at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust than anyone else that I can remember, often re-inventing himself to fit the job – another of Tom’s skills. He therefore had more ‘leaving dos’ than anyone else, with gifts of a new pullover on each occasion, as I recall, he was famous for his knitwear!
Tom’s wide knowledge of natural history was astounding. We would often be talking on a particular subject, when Tom would go off at a tangent about some related detail which I knew nothing about. It was always interesting and often humorous.
Tom had a vast collection of classic films on VHS, ‘I filled a room with those’ being a typical comment. He also had a complete (as far as I know) collection of first editions of the New Naturalists books. It was obvious that these gave him pleasure.
He was celebrated for his karaoke performances at parties (any excuse for a party was good enough for Tom, he knew how to enjoy himself!) His musical tastes were indeed wide and varied; many of the CDs I copied for him would be summarised by him as ‘really great, never heard them before’.
His sense of humour and fun go without saying. He often blamed me for influencing his sense of humour. He’d laugh at terrible jokes and make you feel a better person!
There are rumours of Tom’s love of cider… I never saw this, as whenever I had a drink (or two) with him, it was beer – real ale, of course. When we both lived in Devizes, we would regularly meet up in The Southgate, sit in the corner like two old codgers (which we were), and talk about anything and everything and put the world to rights. Tom always seemed to have his umbrella, whatever the weather!
From Rob Randall.
Tom had been a good friend since the 1970s. The exact date eludes me, but the occasion is cemented hard in my memory. I was out botanising in private quarry ground behind Brown’s Folly, probably looking for orchids: this was before it became a nature reserve.
I burst out of the bushes only to see a young man on hands and knees busy photographing a plant. He was also trespassing of course, so to save any embarrassment on his or my part I decided to go up and have a chat. I forget what he was looking at but I am sure the photographs were excellent. I think it was Tom who suggested I join Bath Nats.
Tom, Dave Green and I occasionally went on trips to see rare plants and I remember going to look for the Red Helleborine in a secret location on the Cotswolds. Although it was on a public right of way there was usually someone not far away guarding it. We all took our photos in time before the guard appeared and I am sure Tom’s were great but when I got home I discovered my film was stuck in the camera and I ripped it trying to extract it. Divine retribution perhaps.
Tom studied statistics while at university and I remember in those days Bath Chronicle had a quiz of some sort. Tom worked out how many entries he had to make to win and submitted them all whenever the quiz was published. After winning two times in a row, they thought perhaps he ought not to enter the competition again. Sounds a bit like what Bath council gets told if they win Britain in Bloom too many times.
We were regularly in touch from that point on and often went exploring (and sometimes trespassing) together until Tom took his job with the Civic Trust. I visited him a few times while he was based in London and occasionally after he moved to Devizes, especially while he was General Secretary for Bath Nats, but I missed those trips out to look for and photograph rarities.