A capacity audience enjoyed the 2025 Herts Bird Conference on Saturday 8 March, which included fascinating talks on Green Sandpipers and the 'gold standard' Breeding Birds Survey in Britain.

Those attending also voted for the Hertfordshire Bird Photograph of the Year – Paul Ward's striking image of a Common Snipe and its reflection taken at Lemsford Springs near Welwyn Garden City.

Videos of the main presentations are available on the HNHS YouTube site.

Lemsford Springs has also been the location since 1983 of remarkable study of Green Sandpipers that remain in Hertfordshire for all but their short breeding season in Scandinavia.

Former HNHS and Herts Bird Club Chair, Ken Smith, has conducted the research with Barry Trevis, the site's voluntary warden, and Mike Reid. In more than 40 years, they have ringed 200 birds, resulting in 20,000 re-sightings.

They have also used increasingly sophisticated tags to track individuals on their late April migration, discovering that almost all of them breed in Norway and Sweden. Unusually for waders, they are tree nesters and typically reach their breeding territories in four to five days, crossing the North Sea in a single flight.

The research shows that the female birds typically start their return journey after just 42 days. The males, who remain longer to feed their fledglings, return after 60 days.

The conference also heard from James Heywood, national organiser of the British Trust for Ornithology's Breeding Birds Survey (BBS). The 30-year old survey uses volunteer surveyors to record all the birds they find while walking along line transects in randomly selected 1km squares.

Tens of millions of birds have been recorded since the survey began, providing reliable trend data on wild bird populations that inform Government policy, and feed into the annual State of Nature report on biodiversity. The data has also been used in pan-European reports and the BBS methodology has also been adopted in a number of other European countries.

James referred to some the survey's key findings that have influenced decision-making, including the plunge in Greenfinch numbers caused by viral disease that led to it's immediate 'red list' classification when it had previously been rated 'green' and of least concern. The survey had also provided evidence of the impact of disease on Chaffinches and Blackbirds, as well as worrying falls in the  breeding populations of Whinchats and Curlews. A more positive recent trend had been an increase in numbers of Skylarks being recorded each year, although the increase was modest compared with the population plunge that preceded it.

Other speakers included  Lynne Lambert, who described the successful use of winter supplementary feeding at Marsworth Reservoir near Tring to maximise the number of Reed Buntings being caught and ringed. She said there was evidence that the additional seed (millet) was also helping survival rates.

In his review of the previous years most significant bird sightings in Hertfordshire, Graham Knight highlighted the appearance of  Lesser Grey Strike, a south-east European species that was new to the county. It was seen on May 10 only at Lilley. A Black-winged Stilt was the first seen in Herts since 1998 and Ferruginous Ducks were found in two different places toward the end of the year.

Lesser Grey Shrike at Lilley ©Alan Lewis. The photo was a runner-up in the 2024 Herts Bird Photograph of the Year

It was the first year that Nightingales bred in Herts since 2017, although the nest is thought to have failed. Peregrine Falcons continued to do well, with four out of six nests in the county raising eight young.

The Herts Bird Club / HNHS is, again, grateful to Affinity Water for hosting the conference at their offices in Hatfield.