Personal Summary of the EBCC Conference in Cluj

A huge banner with the conference logo was fixed at the top of the FSEGA building, bringing the attention of the public to the conference.

The conference started with welcomes from the hosting organizations and an excellent plenary from Erika Stanciu, who highlighted the biodiversity value and the considerable challenges facing Romania’s extensive forests. The afternoon´s plenary was from Andy Musgrove, who provided an overview of the rapidly expanding development of citizen science, including results from recent analyses combining data from different European online bird recording platforms. In between, participants attended two parallel sessions of talks on monitoring, farmland bird conservation, and new analytical methods. There was also a dedicated poster session. On the following day, Jeremy Greenwood gave an inspiring plenary on the history of the EBCC and especially the last European Bird Atlas, taking us on a journey through the good, the bad, the science, and the politics, to the final production of the landmark product. Oral sessions on this day covered new atlas projects, studies on the effects of climate change, developing new indicators, spatial modeling, and conservation issues.

The poster session gave a good opportunity for more informal meetings of participants.

The EBCC Annual Board Meeting was held just before the afternoon session, where EBCC Delegates voted in a new Board including two new Executive Committee members (Aleksi Lehikoinen and Danae Portolou) to replace Åke Lindström and Hans-Günther Bauer, both departing after nine years of dedicated service. Not even the evenings were free, with workshops on how to generate population estimates and on trends in breeding waterbirds on offer. Alternatives included watching Syrian woodpeckers around the hotel, visiting the old town and sampling the drinks on offer at the Soviets, or taking in the heady atmosphere of the nearby Iulius Mall.

New (and old) EBCC Board members and observers. Upper row from left: Hans-Günter Bauer, Ian Burfield, Verena Keller, Mark Eaton, Henning Heldbjerg, Danae Portolou, Szabolcs Nagy, and David Noble. Lower row from left: Åke Lindström, Aleksi Lehikoinen, Ruud Foppen, Anny Anselin, Jana Škorpilová, Oskars Keišs, Mikhail Kalyakin, and Petr Voříšek.

Thursday was excursion day and despite the pessimistic predictions of weather, each busload of participants embarked on a tour of Transylvania’s beautiful forest and mountain landscapes and managed to see some rare and spectacular birds such as Sombre Tit, Long-legged Buzzard, Golden Eagle, Red-rumped Swallow, Saker Falcon, and Rock Bunting. Tired and by that time very hungry, participants ended the day in a small town outside Cluj in the Tamas Bistro with a traditional Transylvanian feast, including goulash cooked over an open fire, and a variety of wines and spirits presented with much ceremony and spirit by the waiters.

One of the conference field trips led to the Turda Gorge natural reserve, a 2 900 m long canyon formed through the erosion of the Jurassic limestone of the mountain.

Highlights of the final day of the conference were plenaries from Paola Laiolo, who introduced us to a wide range of research on alpine birds and their specialist adaptations, and from Tony Fox on how he managed to turn his youthful obsession with bird-watching into a career in bird conservation. Parallel oral sessions covered alpine birds and indicators, results of common bird monitoring projects, and waterbird monitoring. All that was left for the EBCC Chair, Ruud Foppen, to do was officially end the conference and express all of our sincere thanks to Zoltan Szabo and the rest of the Local Organising Team – Eva, Dora, Cristi, Beata, Judit, Zoltan, Liviu, Gabor, Istvan, Ioan, and Ede – for such an excellent conference and for all their hard work.

Thanks to the great work of the Local Organising Team, the EBCC conference ran very smoothly.

See you all at the next EBCC conference in spring 2016, most likely in Germany!