Herts Bird Club

The 2026 Hertfordshire Bird Conference attracted a full house of HNHS/Bird Club members and friends on Saturday 7 March to hear fascinating talks on Swift conservation, birds in urban greenspaces and the 'journey' of a bird record submitted through the Bird Club website.

Videos of all the main presentations can be found on the HNHS YouTube channel

Swifts are our fastest bird in level flight and famously only land when nesting. They otherwise feed, drink, sleep and mate on the wing.

We are pleased to announce that the popular HNHS exhibition 'Wildlife - for the Record' will continue for an extra fortnight at North Hertfordshire Museum, Hitchin. The final day will now be Sunday 1 March.

The exhibition is the concluding event in celebrations to mark the Society's 150th anniversary. It features species and habitats that are special to the north of the county, and wildlife exhibits from the museum's store that are not normally on display.

Orchids are one of the most glamorous and diverse plant groups on earth, with 28,000 species worldwide. However, only 51 are known in Britain and Ireland – and just 22 grow in Hertfordshire, according Co-county Flora Recorder, Ian Denholm.

Giving the 2026 Gerald Salisbury Memorial Lecture on 22 January he provided an overview of all the county's extant species and seven others that have disappeared in the past 60 years. These ranged from those like Pyramidal Orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) that is thriving in a warming climate to the exceptionally rare Military Orchid (Orchis militaris) that flowered on a Herts. gravel extraction site for two years before being destroyed in 2020.

A video of Prof. Denholm's lecture, written with fellow orchid expert Prof Richard Bateman, can be viewed on the HNHS YouTube site.