ORNITHOLOGY
The county of Herefordshire has a varied and undulating central area consisting of lowland surrounded by an irregular and broken ring of hills . The solid geology of the greater part of Herefordshire is of the Devonian age and the characteristic red soil is derived from weathered Old Red Sandstone. Much of the area is rural, and includes high hills, forest, commons, river meadows and pools. There are a wide range of settlement patterns, different types of farmlands and evidence of ancient landscape features.
Woodlands, trees, traditional and modern orchards, and hedgerow patterns contribute to the landscape character. Thus, the county provides a wide range of habitats suitable for birds, and the Herefordshire County List extends to 275 species from the British List, the majority of which are resident, breeding and/or wintering in the county. 145 of these are generally widely distributed across the county and include all the more common resident and summer/winter migrant species. Minor species occur in lower numbers at a limited number of locations, and may not be recorded every year, while rare species are those that occur only once or twice in a five year period and are restricted to one or two locations. Especially good habitats for birds include the Wellington and Brockhall gravel pits, the lower Lugg Meadows and some of the parklands.
Changes in farming practices during the last 50 years have been dramatic and large declines in some farmland bird species populations have occurred as a result. The continuing decline of some species can be stabilised or reversed through management decisions directed towards maintaining and improving habitats. Herefordshire has a wide and diverse range of ancient and secondary woodland a decline in woodland quality reduces the availability of suitable nesting and foraging habitats for some of the woodland specialists and also summer migrants due to loss of structure in the woodland canopies. In contrast, well managed native woodlands have a wide range of tree age ad variety of composition to support a balanced and diverse range of birdlife. The rivers and streams of Herefordshire provide valuable habitat for a wide range of resident and migrant waterbirds and waders, but the historical widespread drainage of farmland in the post war years has destroyed much of the wet and marshy habitat of the county previously used by waders. The larger bodies of water provided at gravel pit sites, reservoirs and on farm lakes have become of increasing importance in recent years.
Perhaps the first account of the county's birds was by Woolhope Club founder, Dr Henry Bull. Bull's Birds of Herefordshire was published posthumously by the Woolhope Club in 1888. A copy of this early work is available here.
In 1941, a further work, Captain Humphrey Adam Gilbert and C.W. Walker's Herefordshire Birds saw its first publication by the Woolhope Club, with updated editions in 1954 and 1975.
The ornithologists in the Woolhope Club peeled away in 1950 to form the Herefordshire Ornithological Club which provides an active programme of field meetings and winter talks, and compiled the The Birds of Herefordshire 2007-2012 – An Atlas of Their Breeding and Wintering Distributions (Liverpool University Press, 2014, ISBN: 9781781381267).
The Woolhope Club maintains a strong collaboration with the HOC and has a regular focus on ornithology in the annual Transactions. An article of historic importance is McDougall P., Smith A.J. and Vickerman J. The Birds of Burley Gate in the parish of Ocle Pychard, the report of a 3-year survey by HOC members that was published in the Transactions for 1973. It reported a survey of breeding birds in a farmland habitat over a 3 year period.
A number of Woolhope Club members are active ornithologists, ringers for the British Trust for Ornithology , and responsible for monitoring the major nest box sites in the county. The Ornithology report each year discusses a topical ornithological theme such as migration, presents the annual data on the Pied Flycatcher nest box scheme across the county, lists the rarities seen that year, and reports research relevant for Herefordshire.