Current Panel Members

Mark has worked for the RSPB since 2001, based initially at the Edward Grey Institute, Oxford, studying farmland bird ecology, then at the headquarters in Sandy in the Monitoring & Indicators section of the Conservation Science department. He works on a wide range of projects, including running single species surveys, the production of UK and English wild bird indictors, the red-listing of birds, the development of monitoring schemes abroad (e.g. Bulgaria, Romania, Nepal) and ‘citizen science’ surveys, and is the lead author on the annual The state of the UK’s birds report. In recent years, he has overseen UK surveys of Golden Eagle, Capercaillie, Hen Harrier, Marsh Harrier, Black Grouse, Black & Red-throated Diver and Common Scoter.

Before the RSPB, Mark studied wintering waders on the Northumberland and Durham coasts, and worked on conservation projects in Canada and Mexico. Recent fatherhood now leaves little time for birds outside work, although he can be found birdwatching near his Cambridgeshire home whenever the opportunity presents itself..

Editor, NE Scotland Bird Report and Scottish Bird News. Member, NE Scotland Raptor Study Group (Osprey co-ordinator). Joint co-ordinator of Greenland White-fronted Goose Study and NE Scotland Breeding Bird Atlas (2002-2006). Ringing permit holder, member of Grampian Ringing Group. Chair, NE Scotland Biological Records Centre. Born 1959. Ph.D. in peatland hydrology.

Particular interests within ornithology: Geese, especially Greenland White-fronts, raptors (especially Ospreys), waders, Lapland Buntings, atlasing and biological recording, and African birds. Publications: wide range of publications, e.g. on Greenland White-fronted Geese, Lapland Buntings, Broad-billed Sandpipers, African birds, peatland and land use issues, many articles in local bird reports. Working on forthcoming ‘Breeding Bird Atlas of NE Scotland’.

Simon has been involved in the RBBP and rare breeding birds since the early stages of work on the 2007-11 Bird Atlas project. Initially an 'observer', and latterly a fully-fledged Panel member, Simon acted as go-between ensuring that information on rare breeding birds was successfully captured and sensitively mapped as part of the Atlas project.

Simon's professional interests include the ongoing development of the Bird Atlas, the ecology of farmland birds and in particular the ecology of Golden Plovers and Lapwings on which he studied for his PhD. He is also involved in studies of wader migration in the USA and the changing bird communities of Scottish upland scrub habitats. He is a keen birdwatcher, photographer and artist and has recently moved from Norfolk to Cambridgeshire and is still trying to find its coastline....

After a long interest in the status and distribution of breeding birds in the British Isles, Mark became RBBP Secretary in May 2006. An active member of the birding scene in southeast Scotland, he is a former President of Scottish Ornithologists’ Club (2003-2005) and a member of Atlas Working Group for the Bird Atlas 2007-11 since 2004.

He is a co-author of The Breeding Birds of South-east Scotland (1998), a local tetrad atlas study, and is now part of the organising team for the repeat Atlas of this area, and national Atlas Regional Organiser for Lothian.

Mark is particularly interested in bird distributions and has organised and taken part in many local and national surveys. He has written up a number of such studies, most recently Nuthatches in Lothian and Roof-nesting gulls in Edinburgh. Since 1995 he has also been a member of the Lothian & Borders Raptor Study Group, initially compiling data on the re-colonisation of the Borders by Buzzards and now co-ordinating records of Long- and Short-eared Owls.

Since 2002 he has lived by the sea in North Berwick, East Lothian, returning to the coast after spells in Scottish Borders, Leicester, Nottingham and (originally) North Yorkshire. He has been active in local ornithology in all these areas.

Andrew King has been a keen ornithologist since his early teens in Hampshire. Even at that time he began to take part in waterfowl surveys and counts, as well as the early Atlas projects. After gaining a BSc Biological Sciences at London University he entered a career in Agriculture R & D, advisory work and latterly as a Rural Inspector in South Wales. His interest in bird distribution, counts and habitat selection continued after moving to Breconshire, and he contributes to many BTO surveys. He joined the County Records Committee in 1992, and became County Recorder in 2004. Apart from maintaining the archive and editing the County Bird Report, he maintains a close interest in the fortunes of farmland birds in mid-Wales. He takes an active role in licensed monitoring work of breeding Peregrine Falcons in South Wales, and montane waders in Scotland.

He is widely travelled across Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, and in parts of Africa and Australia.

David has lived in Cheshire since 1978. He chairs Merseyside Ringing Group and publishes their acclaimed website. He has recently authored the 704-page Birds in Cheshire and Wirral: a breeding and wintering atlas, which was judged 4th in the British Birds / BTO Best Bird Book of the Year 2009 competition.

His RBBP-related activities include ringing chicks in most of Cheshire’s Peregrine nests since 1993, a long-running study of Wales’ only Little Tern colony, and proving several ‘first breeding’ records for Cheshire: Marsh Warbler (1991), Cetti’s Warbler (2009) and Marsh Harrier (2010). His broad interests in birds are illustrated by his papers on waders on the Mersey Estuary, Fieldfares, Common Terns, Little Terns, Wood Warblers, Firecrests and Bramblings; and he wrote the BTO Migration Atlas texts on Common Tern, Wood Warbler and Chaffinch. The BTO recognised his amateur work in surveying, nest recording and ringing birds by awarding him its Bernard Tucker Medal in 2002.

He has always been an advocate for the conservation value of bird study, and has been active in committee rooms as well as in the field. David was a Council member of English Nature (1996-2002), acting as Chairman for six months, a member of RSPB Council (2004-09) and is Chairman of Cheshire Wildlife Trust.

Professionally, David was a physicist and eventually became Director of a national scientific facility before retiring early. He is now an Honorary Research Associate of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, USA, spending up to a month each year at their Powdermill Nature Reserve.

David Stroud is responsible for providing JNCC’s ornithological advice to government, the statutory conservation agencies and others at both UK and international scales. This has involved managing commissioned research and survey programmes with a range of other governmental and non-governmental organisations, including developing new formal partnership agreements, notably the BTO/RSPB/JNCC Breeding Bird Survey, the BTO/WWT/RSPB/JNCC Wetland Bird Survey, and the recent multi-partner Scottish Raptor Monitoring Agreement. In the late 1990s, he provided the Secretariat to the Raptor Working Group, established by Ministers to consider conflicts between raptors and various other interests. The RWG delivered its consensus report – developed after five-years of deliberations – to Ministers in 2000. He has co-ordinated two national reviews of the UK network of Special Protection Areas classified under the EU Birds Directive, the most recent published by JNCC in 2001.

Among David’s personal ornithological interests are the long-term population study of Greenland White-fronted Geese, developing a better understanding of the historical and current distribution and trends of Spotted Crakes in the UK, as well as the assessment of population status and trends of waders in Africa and western Eurasia.