Sixty nine members of SOS attended the AGM on Saturday 17 April 2010, nearly double last year’s thirty six.

A Special Resolution was passed with the necessary two thirds majority. The Resolution contained the following provisions. The Society’s second Object was changed from “To assist in the preservation of wild birds in Great Britain” to read: “To assist in the conservation of the wild birds of Great Britain”. The position of Assistant Recorder was removed from the list of the Society’s Officers, who are expected to sit on Council, and the position of Conservation Field Officer will also be deleted in 2012.

The following new members were elected to Council:

Recorder: Nick Paul has been a birdwatcher all his life, but only joined the SOS on his retirement in 2000. He was an Examiner of the Society’s accounts for 2003 and 2004 and then became Editor of the Sussex Bird Report in 2004, completing the Annual Bird Reports for 2003 to 2007 inclusive. He became a member of Council and Scientific Committee in 2004 and served until April 2009. In the summer of 2009, he was appointed Assistant Recorder on the resignation of the previous Assistant Recorder and served on Council for the remainder of the 2009/10 Society year. His birdwatching travels have taken him over much of northern and southern Europe. He was resident in Iran from 1972 to the end of 1974 and birdwatched extensively around the north of the country. Since 1996, he has also visited East Africa and Southern Africa twice a year as two of his children have been resident there at various times.

Editor of Sussex Bird Report: Mick Bullen is a semi-retired primary school teacher who has lived in Sussex since 1988. He has been a keen walker and birdwatcher for over 30 years, and particularly enjoys the birds of the downs and woodlands. He spent a year doing charity work in Nepal in 2007, which provided the opportunity to see more exotic birds, and he also enjoys drawing and painting birds as a hobby.

There were no candidates for the positions of Editor of the Newsletter and Honorary Secretary.

Members of Council: Two new members of Council were elected.

David Howey was born in Northumberland, where he spent his formative years and where he started birding when he was eleven. During his time in Northumberland, he was instrumental in the founding of the Northumberland and Tyneside Bird Club and served as Recorder and as Secretary. When he left Northumberland, he moved to Gloucester before settling in Sussex. His birding has taken him to many parts of the world from the Americas to Africa, the Indian sub-continent, South-East Asia and Australia plus a lot of countries in between. He has published papers in British Birds, SxBR and Birds in Northumbria. He currently writes ten species accounts for SxBR and has been asked to cover twenty species for the new Sussex Avifauna to be produced on completion of the current Atlas work.

Richard Lowe was always interested in birds as a child and was given the Observer’s Book of Birds when he was about six. Although he did not have much time for birdwatching when he started work as a chef, the interest continued and he joined the RSPB in the late 1960s and the SOS in 1980 (he has been to most of the conferences since). When he moved to Surrey, he joined the committee of East Surrey RSPB where he has been outings organiser since 1998. He also surveys farms for the RSPB farm alliance (this year a farm near Haywards Heath). He is on the committee of the Lingfield Wildlife Area, of which he was Chairman for two years. He is a member of the Ashdown Forest Bird Group and a volunteer at the Ashdown Forest Centre. He is also a member of BTO, Friends of Weirwood, Dungeness Bird Observatory, Portland Bill Observatory and the Welsh Kite Trust. For more than a decade, he has led a dawn chorus on Ashdown Forest for the East Grinstead Natural History Society.

After the formal business of the AGM, the well-known wildlife photographer and writer, David Boag, gave an informative and entertaining talk on the Kingfisher.