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The 56th K.O.S Annual General Meeting held at Maidstone on 13th April 2007.
PRESIDENT’S INTRODUCTION by Don TaylorI welcome you all to this 56th AGM of the KOS, I am confident that the extremely able members of the Executive Committees and the sub-committees will continue with their diligence to provide a long-term future for the society, despite current declining numbers.
You will have received two annual Kent Bird Reports (KBR) since the last AGM and work is already underway for the 2005 KBR which we hope will be out before the end of the year. I would just like to emphasise, as I did last year, that all the work that goes into the production is being done by volunteers, many of whom have extremely busy working lives. I believe that, despite rapid advances in IT, our annual report is an important historical document, produced to an extremely high standard and is still a welcome addition to our bookshelves. I certainly want to continue collecting them. Since the last AGM a number of you will now have a complete set of the societies annual reports from 1952 – 2002 and the 1981 Birds of Kent all on one DVD, such is progress. We are the first birding society to do this and the March 2007 issue of British Birds gave it a rave revue, so do have a look. If you haven’t yet purchased one at the bargain price of £10 for members, I would highly recommend it to you. We owe a great debt of thanks to Robin Mace who can explain more about its usage and whose expertise and enthusiasm has made this possible. Andrew Henderson is setting an extremely high standard of content for the next Birds of Kent and it will undoubtedly again set new standards for county avifaunas. However, with this come challenges to complete species texts and too many writers have either dropped out or are finding it difficult to meet deadlines. So if there are any writers amongst you who would like to take on a few species, please let us know. Please don’t anticipate an imminent publication because there is a considerable amount of writing still to be done. Patience is a great virtue, as all birders know.
Martin Coath will expand further on the work of the Executive Committee during the past year, when I ask him to give his report and I propose that, if there is time, there will be an opportunity for a brief question or comment or two following the reports from the Chairman of each of the committees or sub-committees. However, I would just remind you that this is not the time for lengthy discussions or decisions, as no additional items were received before the agenda was published and, if you have suggestions or comments, we will certainly welcome them through the usual channels. We do have a vitally important role to play in conserving our environment, so please encourage others to join the society and please keep submitting your records and volunteering your time and enthusiasm for the various surveys, that both the national organisations and the KOS initiate.
Apologies for absence received from: Barry Wright – Chairman of the Editorial and Records Sub-Committee and Ian Hodgson.
CHAIRMAN’S REPORT by Martin Coath
Our committees, beginning with the executive. This meets every quarter and discusses a range of topics. The minutes are published on the Website, which also has biographies and photos of most of its member, not always a pretty sight! Manual copies of the minutes are available from the Honorary Secretary. I would like to record my thanks, in no particular order, to the 15 members: President, Don Taylor, who is involved in so much of the Society’s activities, Vice-chairman, Tony Morris, our meetings specialist, Secretary Ann Abrams, who presents us with such prompt minutes and pursues all the action points with great zeal, Treasurer, Mike Henty, a very safe and resourceful pair of financial hands, Membership secretaries, Ken Lodge and Dave Sutton, who do a lot of unseen work, Gordon Allison for taking over as Chairman of the Conservation and Surveys Committee, Barry Wright, for his active Chairmanship of the Editorial and Records Committee, Tim Hodge, Kent Bird Report Editor and Archivist, Robin Mace for all his work on the three committees and producing our CD/DVD, John Cantelo for taking over the KOS Newsletter, Jack Chantler, who is described as an ordinary member but is also recorder for East Kent, Chris Abrams, the Webmaster and Sally Hunter for all the work she puts in as British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Representative. Bob and Ann Bland no longer have to organise the packing meetings as the printers deal with posting, but I would like to thank them for all they have done over the years and for being very supportive members.
The Editorial and Records Sub-Committee is led by Barry Wright a very active birder at home and abroad, but he still finds time to deal with the many problems and challenges of rarities and records with some panache. Barry cannot be with us this evening, but he has sent me a copy of his report, which I shall deliver later. Our thanks to Michael Ellison for his fruitful chairmanship of the Conservation and Surveys Sub-Committee, in the last two years. He is taking a well earned sabbatical from the RSPB and Gordon Allison has taken his place. He has been a close colleague of Michael’s and is another RSPB warden keeping our RSPB connection going. We will be hearing from him later about the achievements of this committee. Ian Hodgson is standing down as Editor of our KOS Newsletter after 12 splendid years and nearly 50 editions, a terrific achievement, involving not only writing the species list, but also collating other news and articles and getting it all to the printers. Ian has been appointed Ornithological Manager of Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory and we wish him well in his new post. His successor is John Cantelo, well known to many as a very active member. He will welcome articles from the membership. I must stress that this is not a preserve of committee members anyone can send in articles.
We need your records, whether by letter, phone call, email, disc, through KOSNet, pigeons, smoke signals or postcard. I recall a postcard being sent of a rare bird, it being received and the receiver being able to see the bird all on the same day! Some methods of communication are not what they used to be! I make no apologies for my annual mention of Bird Track. It is an excellent way to get records on to the BTO and KOS databases. Some people use it to store their own records. I use it regularly for sites, from which records do not usually originate. The site rarely plays up. Bird track records have helped us to boost the number of records on the KOS database to 150,000 for 2005 giving us more data to deal with.
We have thanked both Ian Hodgson and Jon Braggs for all they have done for us with a present. Ian has chosen an original painting by Eustace Barnes and Jon has chosen three prints by Ian Lewington.
Our thanks to Tony Morris for organising our meetings over the last five years and making sure the evenings go so smoothly. He has arranged a number of enjoyable talks, and it is a great pity that audience numbers have declined in the last two years. Derek Jackson has agreed to take over. He already has a list of speakers for 2007/8 and has moved the venue within Maidstone and changed the day from Friday to Thursday. He is also a member of the Maidstone RSPB Group and is fostering mutual co-operation between the two bodies. Reports indicate that our outdoor meetings were well attended and enjoyed, subject to the weather. Since Murray Orchard stood down Don and I respectively have organised the programme for the last two seasons. Tony Morris, bless his heart, has agreed to take over. We do plan to publicise our meetings by the issue of a card to all members with the summer edition of KOS News, on the website, on KOSNet and by poster. I do apologise for our failure to send you a card this year. This was due to a breakdown in electronic communications. The Publicity Sub-committee is on stand by to ginger up all our publicity efforts.
Last year “British Birds” published its first ever review of a website and gave our website a glowing report. Congratulations to Chris Abrams, our Webmaster, assisted by Robin Mace, Andy Lawson and Mike Buckland, our Photographic Editor. They would welcome photos, trip reports and up to date local bird news. It is your society and your website; contribute as much as you can.
Our chat group, KOSNet, has over 400 subscribers, who have aired a number of topics. It has become a very good forum for debate, but if you see a number of topics on a subject of no interest to you the delete button is your salvation. But some subscribers use KOSNet as a guide to where to go birding. It’s cheaper than a pager and our recorders take records from it. I would like to thank Julian Russell, who runs it without problems for Committee. May it remain so!
May I wish you all a good year’s birding and a few summer migrants. EDITORIAL and RECORDS SUB-COMMITTEE REPORT read by Martin Coath
The past year has seen several changes on the committee and once again there are numerous individuals to thank for their hard work.
The meetings held in the past year, five in total have been very productive and generally well attended despite our busy schedules. I would especially like to thank Gordon Allison at Bromhey farm, Dungeness RSPB and SBBOT for hosting us.
The KBRs, as a result of the vast amount of data being collected now, are the work of a growing team of individuals and without them collecting, entering, extracting, collating, writing, proof reading and editing all this information there would never be a report. The area recorders and writers tirelessly entering data deserve special thanks
Tim Hodge, archivist and Editor for the ‘newly arrived’ KBR 2004 and ‘soon to appear’ KBR2005 has worked hard in collaboration with Robin Mace to get the KBRs out there amongst the membership and to be as accurate and complete as possible. Once again the KBR has a superb front cover from Stephen Message together with excellent line drawings from various artists and stunning photos compiled by Mike Buckland.
The past year has seen a change in Secretary with Ken Lodge starting off the year and continuing the fine work of all his previous years, then Alan Fossey taking up the role later in the year and meticulously entering the minutes onto his laptop and producing the minutes very speedily thereafter.
Having compiled ‘just one more’ newsletter, Ian Hodgson has handed over the reigns to John Cantelo and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the English language. Many thanks to Ian for all his hard work and we look forward to continue to work with him as he will now be representing SBBOT at future meetings.
Once again the study of the rarer visitors to the county takes up a huge amount of time and this year we will have a new BBRC secretary to work with Nigel Hudson, following the recent death of Mike Rogers who was a great asset to bird recording and helped the KOS out over countless years with numerous queries. His skills and knowledge will be a hard act to follow.
The Internet has changed the way that we record birds now, both common and rare, and like BBRC we are gradually moving towards using less paper by scanning rarity records and emailing them to our Rarity Panel and BBRC. Recent changes on the Rarity panel have seen us assessing previously very rare birds that BBRC no longer assess and this has increased the workload. Phil Chantler, Chris Hindle and Richard Bonser, who replace Gordon Allison and Nigel Jarman, who have recently completed their terms, will join Ian Roberts, Richard Jenkinson and John Tilbrook. Thanks to all of them.
Once again our County Observatories have been very helpful and as ever Dave Walker at DBO has documented all the record for the Dungeness area and submitted them literally a few days into 2007!! It’s almost impossible in a short period of time to thank everyone associated with the process of producing the KBR but without them we would not be able to go to the shelf and digest a review of the birds of Kent in any one-year.
Finally, as I stated last year, thanks once again to you our members; any KOS publication would be impossible without your input and bird sightings. CONSERVATION and SURVEYS SUB-COMMITTEE REPORT by Gordon Allison
Michael Ellison has stepped down and we have also lost Phil Chantler to the rarities panel. However we welcome Richard Moyse from the Kent Wildlife Trust and Sally Hunter as the BTO representative. The Committee is also ably assisted by Rob Clements, Tim Hodge and Owen Sweeney.
Surveys we are involved in:
We continue to be involved in conservation issues, the windfarm at Grain and most importantly the expansion of Lydd Airport. TREASURER’S REPORT by Mike Henty
There was a surplus of income over expenditure in 2006 of £4,341, which compares with a surplus of £2,685 in 2005. The main differences between the years are as follows.
Subscription income was down on 2005. That’s the second year running that the number of members has gone down and is something the Executive Committee is looking into as this cannot go on.
Income tax recovered under Gift Aid is less than 2005 because the 2005 figure represented tax recovered for the six tax years up to April 2005. In 2006 we recovered £694 tax for the year to April 2006 and then six-years worth [£848] in respect of the 47 members who newly signed up for Gift Aid following our appeal in the summer newsletter. Thank you all who have signed up for Gift Aid, including the 47 from last year. This should give us an annual income of around £850 next year except Gordon Brown has to be thanked for a loss when the basic rate of income tax falls to 20% from the current 22%, loosing £100 of that in the following year
In 2005 we received a single donation of £570 from one of our members and last year that same member gave us another £200. We are extremely grateful for this generosity needless to say.
Bank interest is higher in 2006 compared to 2005 only because we changed the way interest was credited in 2006 to having interest credited every six months instead of annually. The effect was that we received eighteen months worth of interest in 2006.
Income at meetings was down on 2005, essentially because of reduced attendance. This is something already mentioned and we have sought to remedy.
Sales of KBRs has always fluctuated and is unpredictable. The 2005 amount was about double the average for previous years so £324 for last year was still pretty good.
A new thing is sales of our CD/DVD. We received £850 from the sale of CDs or DVDs of our past KBRs at a cost this year of £244 for the CDs/DVDs, packaging & postage, which is shown below under Sundry Purchases. The initial cost of getting all our past publications stored in electronic format last year was £916 so we have now reduced the net cost to only £310. Sales in 2007 will further reduce this so this is a pretty good deal to secure all our data.
Turning to expenditure: Taking the cost of the KBR and other printing, postage and stationery together, our expenditure is down on 2005. At last year’s AGM I expressed concern about how our postage costs might increase when Royal Mail revised it’s limits for weight and size of envelopes. Surprisingly we have actually benefited from the changes, partly due to a decision to reduce the dimensions of our Newsletter, which is now a small not a large letter.
Sundry purchases I have already mentioned. Depreciation is down because last year some of our items of equipment were written down to nil book value and we bought nothing new in 2006; more detail is given under Note(b) overleaf. All other items of expenditure are on a par with last year or reflect their one-off nature.
Our Total Reserves are divided between the Birds of Kent Fund and the General Fund which is shown in Note (a) on the reverse and generally reflects a healthy state of our finances.
That concludes my report. Thanks are due to Keith Ellis who has again agreed, in the preferred terminology of the Charity Commission, to be the independent examiner of our accounts.
Acceptance of accounts – Proposed by: Bob Bland, Seconded by: Murray Orchard.
Don thanked all these committees for the time and effort they put into running the society and the Chairmen of the three committees. He asked them to convey the members’ appreciation of the work they do to all their committee members who were not present.
Election of Officers: No further nominations had been received for the Executive Committee. Proposed by: Rod Smith Seconded by:Murray Orchard
Executive Committee: Chairman – Martin Coath Vice Chairman – Tony Morris Honorary Secretary – Annie Abrams Honorary Treasurer – Mike Henty Membership secretaries – Ken Lodge & Dave Sutton Chairman of E&RSC – Barry Wright Chairman of C&SSC – Gordon Allison Editor KBR – Tim Hodge Ordinary members – Chris Abrams, Jack Chantler, John Cantelo & Robin Mace
Four illustrated presentations followed – Rob Clements and the status of Raptors in the UK, Robin Mace and a demonstration of the data available on our CD/DVD, Don Taylor and his Wader Quest in Australasia and finally Tony Morris and the birds of California/Arizona.
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