PRESS officer Frank Wood takes a look at Bolton’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) group, now in its 30th anniversary year.

The local group was set up at a meeting in Bolton Town Hall on November 16, 1978. In those early days, membership of around 60 was drawn mainly from Bolton. Now, membership is around 350, thanks to a large influx of new members in recent years from neighbouring towns such as Bury.

In fact, so many new members joined last year that the group received a national award as the top recruiting group in the whole of the UK.

Over the years, Bolton has also been one of the top fundraising groups for conservation projects.

Its latest gift of £3,000 towards the new Ribble Marshes reserve takes its total in 30 years for RSPB projects to more than £120,000.

Each month at Smithills School during the anniversary season there is a succession of leading nature photographers visiting — all familiar names to readers of wildlife magazines. They include Mark Hamblin, David Tipling, Colin Smith and John Gardner.

Heaton man Richard Bohren, who edits the Bolton group’s own magazine, said that our programme organiser, Alan Prosser, has put together a mouth-watering selection and he’s sure it will be a memorable season for us.

The Bolton group started off in a small way in 1978, but grew very rapidly thanks to a large extent to the publicity it received from the late Frank Lowe, who was the Bolton Evening News “Nature Notes” writer for 60 years.

His weekly articles made people aware of the wildlife on their doorstep.

Among the 16 original members who are still in the group is Daphne Tillotson, widow of the former Bolton Evening News owner Marcus Tillotson.

Three of those original members, Tony Johnson and his wife Chris from Horwich, and Geoff Leather from Heaton, still serve on the committee. And two original members, Graham Greenwood and Steve Burns, have kept up their membership even though they both now live in Australia.

Non-members are welcome to join in group events — a good way to find out if you think you might get along with the rest of us.

The next big indoor event is Tooth and Claw, a stunning audio visual show by renowned photographer Mark Hamblin.

It is at Smithills School, Smithills Dean Road, on Thursday, December 11, at 7.30pm.

Before that, there’s a morning walk round Pennington Flash at Leigh, starting from the car park at 9.30am on Sunday, December 7. Again, non-members are welcome to join in.

Anyone interested in joining the Bolton group should contact membership secretary Lesley McManus on 01204 306665 or email her at sleymcmanus@fastmail.fm or recruitment officer Hugo Charlton-Jones on 01204 415200.