NEWS

PARROT CROSSBILL AT BLACK DOWN!
Surrey Birders reported a female parrot crossbill on Black Down at the end of January in a flock of common crossbills. There have only been three other sightings in Surrey - in 1831, 1868 and 1963, so a large group of twitchers was soon prowling the area.

VOTE FOR OUR MUSEUM!
Haslemere Educational Museum is entered for the Museums & Heritage Awards for Excellence which are being judged this spring.
Winners are decided by on-line votes from the general public, so do please support our museum which so kindly accommodates our meetings and displays.
Click here to place your vote!

HISTORY OF GEOLOGY CONFERENCE - 13th APRIL
The museum is the venue for 'In the Footsteps of Sir Archibald Geikie' - a one day conference organised by the History of Geology Group and Haslemere Museum. Exhibits and presentations of various parts of the Geikie Archive will be included. Click here for more details.

PTES HEDGEHOG SURVEY - CAN YOU HELP?
The People's Trust for Endangered Species is concerned that our hedgehog population has fallen by more than 25% recently.
In an effort to identify the cause, they would are monitoring the times at which the creatures emerge from hibernation. Please help by reporting any early hedgehog appearances this year - for full details click here.

PHOTO GALLERIES UPDATED
Our galleries of wildlfe photographs are being updated for 2012. Click here to see lots of new pics!

SOCIETY EXHIBITION - 11th to 25th FEBRUARY 2012
Those of you who attended our AGM in April will remember that we had a number of displays there including some fascinating items from the society's past. Glass cases contained specimens of species once common in the area such as red squirrel and corncrake, and exhibits of great crested newts, wild flowers and fossils were on show together with press cuttings and photos from our early days.
Many of these features will be expanded in our exhibition at the museum in February, so do come along and find out about the society’s past, present and future. Click here for poster

NEXT INDOOR MEETING - 11th FEBRUARY 2:15 pm
Don't miss our next talk of the new year - Susan Holmes on Plant Hunting in Zimbabwe. Click here for poster.

LATEST NEWSLETTER PUBLISHED
Members should by now have received their Autumn/Winter Newsletter, either in hard copy form or as an e-mailed download. See the cover pics by clicking here.
A number of members have now elected to receive their newsletters by e-mail to minimise the costs and effort involved in printing and mailing. This high quality Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the newsletter is now produced for e-mailing to members as an alternative to the printed booklet. If you would like to sign up for this, please e-mail us.
A printed version will, of course, still be available for those members unable to receive the newsletter electronically.

TREE PLANTING FOR THE JUBILEE
The Woodland Trust is promoting a programme of tree planting to commemorate the 2012 Jubilee.
If you know of any landowner or  school that might be interested in planting some trees next year do put them in touch with the trust who can provide advice, site visits, and even help with applications for Forest Commission funding for larger schemes. Click here for more information

RECENT SIGHTINGS - NOW WITH PHOTOS
Our Sightings Page now includes links to photos submitted by members of a few particularly special reports (a rare clustered brittlestem fungus in November, for example). If you manage to get a nice pic of something you report, do please send it in and we'll put it up on the web site for everyone to see.