Join The Club

If you are new to birding then one of the best ways of getting to know more and meeting other like minded people is joining one of the local bird clubs here in the North East. The region is very well served in this area with four superb clubs covering the from Teeside to the Scottish Border. All of the clubs have regular indoor meetings during the winter months and field trips to destinations near and far. Three of the four publish regular bulletins and annual reports and all have websites with degrees of interactivity ranging from sightings pages, member forums and photographs.
Teesmouth Bird Club is a thriving club which is very active in conservation work in Cleveland and produces the Cleveland Bird Report annually. It has 'exclusive' members access to a number of good bird sites on Teeside. The Durham Bird Club has just opened a luxurious new hide at Castle Lake, Bishop Middleham and also occupies the much used 'observatory' at Whitburn, mainly used to watch seabirds.
Further north the Northumberland & Tyneside Bird Club covers the area north of the Tyne including the whole county of Northumberland in it's annual publication Birds in Northumbria. The North Northumberland Bird Club may be the smallest of the four in terms of membership but they celebrate their 25th anniversary this year and are still going strong. Each of the clubs have websites, you can reach by clicking on their name in this post, providing full details of how to join and their activities. If your a birder and not already a member check them out as they are all great places to share sightings and meet new friends as well as engaging in some serious birding.