The 1875 Awards, named after the year the Society was founded, were presented at our Autumn meeting on Saturday 11 October 2014. The award for an outstanding contribution to natural history in Hertfordshire was presented to Peter Delaloye and the award for an outstanding Hertfordshire Naturalist was presented to Andrew Harris.

Peter Delaloye - for an outstanding contribution to natural history in Hertfordshire

The Society's 1875 Awards were instigated in 2008 when Peter was our Chairman and he is a worthy recipient this year.

Peter is always keen to promote the Society, drawing on his experience gained as a sales manager with Trust House Forte. It was under his leadership from 2005-2009, that the society undertook publication of our important series of books, Dragonflies of Hertfordshire and Moths of Hertfordshire in 2008, followed by the Flora of Hertfordshire in 2009. He also oversaw the significant investment in our two websites which have brought the Society to a wider public. Together these initiatives helped to revitalise the Society.

Peter, an accomplished ornithologist, started ringing birds whilst still at school and qualified as a bird ringer well over fifty years ago. He is a key member of the Maple Cross and Runnymede Ringing Groups. He leads the bird ringing programme at Hilfield Park Reservoir, where he is the volunteer warden of the HMWT nature reserve, and he is closely involved with the Herts Bird Club Tree Sparrow recovery project at Tyttenhanger. He encourages and trains new ringers, both young and not so young, and leads bird ringing projects in Portugal and Malta. He was Chairman of the Herts Bird Club from 2000-2005.

Andrew Harris - an outstanding Hertfordshire Naturalist

Andrew is an all round expert naturalist, botanist, accomplished artist and our county recorder for lichens. His interest in recording lichens was kindled 15 years ago, so he attended some lichen courses and with great perseverance and determination has become the county?s leading lichenologist. Along the way he gained an Open University degree, specialising in geology and ecology.

Ten years ago, when he became County Recorder, there were about 3000 Hertfordshire records, now there are 10,000, all submitted to the British Lichen Society database. Andrew's personal challenge was to reach this target before New Years Day 2014, he did it with three days to spare! The records were gathered through a programme of surveys of churchyards, nature reserves and other wildlife sites. In 2010/11 he surveyed many private gardens for the British Lichen Society, so many in fact, that Hertfordshire needed its own section in the national results table when it was published.

Andrew is a 'Wildlife Sites' surveyor and assessor for the Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust and a key member of the Herts Flora Group and the British Naturalists' Association, Herts branch. Andrew devotes considerable time to helping and encouraging other would-be lichenologists, patiently answering questions and encouraging others to join him in his churchyard surveys.