Congratulations to this year’s winners of the prestigious RSPB President’s Awards which were presented at the Society’s AGM in London on Saturday 6th October.
The RSPB President’s Award is our chance to recognise those volunteers who have made an outstanding contribution to the work of the RSPB. In effect it is the RSPB’s equivalent of a volunteering “Oscar” and we only give out six each year!.
Here is the low down on this year’s winners:
Husband and wife team, Mary and Dave Braddock met through their local group in 1996 and have since worked together in a huge range of volunteering roles on our behalf. You name it and they have probably done it – as well as both having full-time jobs: Dave works for Thames Water and Mary is a primary care nurse with the NHS.
As joint Leaders of the North West Surrey Local Group they present the RSPB as a fun and exciting organisation. Their passion for wildlife conservation and support for the RSPB is borne out in everything they do, and they are always willing to step up to new challenges and take on new initiatives. An avid gardener, Dave grows hundreds of quality plants in his wildlife-friendly garden each year, which he and Mary sell on to family, friends and workmates, raising more £7,000 for the RSPB over the past eight years. Their own garden is a case study on how you can provide habitat for birds, a wide range of invertebrates, hedgehogs and even a grass snake.
Denise Chamings has been volunteering for us for 28 years in a wide variety of roles, and as Leader of the South Somerset Local Group since 1994 – which she treats more like a full time job. She doesn’t so much lead the group as guide, motivate, encourage and inspire everyone to get involved, readily supporting suggestions from members and always among the first to put the group forward for pilot projects. She even took our Local Group Manual on holiday recently to review it for headquarters staff!
Denise also leads a successful team of fundraisers who have raised thousands of £s to support the work of our Somerset reserves and the Great Crane Project. It’s not uncommon to find her at local events extolling the virtues of the RSPB and passing on her love of nature to children and parents alike.
Colin Hawkins has undertaken no fewer than 19 different roles since he started volunteering with us in 2008, regularly donating 86 hours of his time every month at our headquarters in Sandy. There’s just no stopping him - he’s the one you go to when you want something done. He brings enthusiasm and vigour to everything he does, drawing on his wealth of project management experience to complete tasks both efficiently and effectively. One of his current roles is administering the Donated Binocular Scheme run by our international team, in which second-hand binoculars and telescopes are sent to BirdLife Partners across the globe. I’m told he does this with a minimum of fuss and a creative lack of bureaucracy. He also assists with fundraising initiatives and has helped to expand the popular pin badge scheme by monitoring stock levels and servicing orders. In addition, he can regularly be found applying his practical skills on our nature reserves, helping out at reserve events, or active on the committee of his Local Group.
Quietly beavering away in the east of England is a real unsung - and unseen - hero, Andrew Wilkinson. He’s regularly out at the crack of dawn monitoring elusive farmland birds, or tucked away in the corner of our regional office in Norwich, quietly engrossed in a book on ecological statistics.
Andy bravely gave up a 30-year career in biochemistry to focus on his passion – birds! He spent a year volunteering at our Titchwell reserve, sharing his passion and knowledge with visitors, and then jumped at an opportunity to undertake farmland bird surveys. Since then, he has designed new methods to monitor farmland bird populations and is continually trialling new ways to support farmers, to demonstrate that wildlife friendly farming measures deployed at the right scale and in the right places can work for a wide range of species. Andy’s warm and approachable manner endear him to all, particularly the farmers and landowners with whom he works. His knowledge and expertise are well respected and he fulfils a key role in underpinning the work of our farmland team in Eastern England.
Date with Nature assistants, Love Nature collectors, Pin Badge minders, Local Group events organisers, Web Stock counters and Bird Friendly Schools volunteers are all roles that Margaret Winwood and Patrick Jones have undertaken since they started volunteering with us just over four years ago. Both are keen birders and their passion shines through infectiously when engaging with people of all ages. They are hugely committed, adaptable and hard working individuals and their enthusiasm and flair for recruiting new members and supporters is second to none. They have personally recruited several hundred new members over the past four years - an outstanding achievement in its own right – and were our best local group recruiters last year. With a “can do“ attitude, both will turn their hands to whatever needs doing, simply rolling their sleeves up and getting stuck in.
Ron Price volunteers in Northern Ireland’s Conservation Office where he started with data entry & has diversified in many directions to the widely appreciated, multi-faceted role he holds today. His many roles now include data entry, mapping on GIS, filing and administration, research and field surveys.
Ron’s attention to detail has meant that he has become increasingly involved in mapping across several species including breeding waders, yellowhammer & lapwing. He is reliable and shows great commitment & willingness to take on anything from very mundane filing to fieldwork & research. He’s completely at home on reserves & will undertake anything required. He has good identification skills & sound ecological knowledge such that he’s been able to help with hen harrier surveys, V&FA surveys, and a local project in the Lagan Valley. Over time he has expanded his skills and gone on to benefit the BTO, for whom he does BBS, WEBS and Atlas work, being one of the team that really helped cover the gaps in NI Atlas coverage. This is enormously important in the struggle to ensure sufficient data to evidence trends in support of RSPB policy and advisory work.
Having taken on a piece of research to support a theory about the past presence of Red Kites in Northern Ireland, the resulting work was published in the Irish Naturalists’Journal 2008 (Price R & Robinson J - The persecution of Kites and other species in 18th century co.Antrim.). This work was a key piece in the jigsaw that enabled Red Kite reintroduction in Northern Ireland and Ron became part of the small team helping with their collection from Wales, subsequent care, release and monitoring.
Want to Volunteer? Ask me!