West Midland Bird Club

The Club was founded as the Birmingham Bird Club, by W. E. Groves and friends on 1 November 1929. The name changed to Birmingham and District Bird Club in 1945, to The Birmingham and West Midland Bird Club in 1947, and the current name was adopted in 1959. A successful West Midland Bird Distribution Survey, published privately in 1951, led to the club publishing the world's first bird atlas, the Atlas of breeding birds of the West Midlands, in 1970. Until 2010, the Club operated an information centre at Kingsbury Water Park (Warwickshire). == President ==

Bill Oddie has been the Club's president since 1999. His first published article on birds appeared in the Club's 1962 Annual Report. He is first credited in the 1956 report, in which reports of his bird observations are tagged with his initials "WEO". He discussed his membership of the Club in one of his first forays in the world of television natural history, as the subject of a Nature Watch Special: Bill Oddie - Bird Watcher, in which he was interviewed by Julian Pettifer, at Bartley Reservoir and the Christopher Cadbury Wetland Reserve. ==Notable members==

Past and present • Horace Alexander • Alan Dean • Rob Hume • Cyril Hurcomb • Tony Norris • Bill Oddie • Mike Rogers • Eric Simms • William Brunsdon Yapp ==Publications==

• A regular Bulletin • An Annual Report • • • • ==References==