The Vice County 62 thing

I've recently taken on the job of bird recorder for the Yorkshire Naturalists Union (YNU) for Vice County 62. The ornithological section of the YNU is the organisation which produces the Yorkshire Bird Report and the Rare and Scarce Species Bird Reports for the county of Yorkshire. For consistency the YNU uses the Watsonian vice county system so that the recording area does not change when political county boundaries are changed.

There seem to be two main jobs: 1. Making contact with birders in VC 62 and convincing them to submit their data and 2. Organising that data and getting it into a useful form for the writers of the YNU report(s).

So if you go birding or are a patch watcher in VC 62 (from just north of Filey - near Cayton Bay - to the south bank of the Tees and inland to roughly the A1 and down to York) I'm interested in your bird records (if you are not sure which vice county you are in give me the map reference and I can sort it out). This includes the south of Teesmouth Bird Club area (County of Cleveland), Scarborough Birders area, Ryedale Natural History Society area - if you usually submit records to these organisations please continue to do so as their that data will come to the YNU via their recorders. I'm not covering any of the area that falls within the York Ornithological Society realm (which straddles three vice counties) someone else is doing that. Please submit your data through the YOS.

I'm very interested in data collected from any site over a number of years and especially where bird populations have changed. So if you have that kind of information and are prepared to share or discuss it I would be very interested to talk to you (exchange email etc).

You may submit rare bird records to me and I will pass these on to the group which is assessing these records. I am not part of the record assessment process (because I don't have that expertise and I don't want to do that job anyway). All information submitted to me is considered to be confidential and will not be passed on other than via YNU systems.

You may submit rare and scarce breeding bird records to me - these will be treated in a highly confidential manner and passed on only via the YNU systems. I do now have the contacts to respond where rare breeding birds are threatened with disturbance so if you think the farmer is going to cut your Corncrake's field I may be able to summon some assistance.

I've also taken on writing the skuas, gulls and terns sections for the YNU 2006 bird report. There is still time to submit data for this. I'd be very interested in any observations of numbers of these species that were recorded in Yorkshire in 2006, especially unusual or large numbers, counts of juveniles and adults (especially of terns), first and last dates for winter or summer visitors and first fledging dates (Yorkshire breeding species) and first observations of juveniles (migrants).

If you want more information please feel free to contact me on birdsvc62@gmail.com