AS SECRETARY of the British Birds Rarities Committee (BBRC), Mike Rogers was very much the engine room of the organisation. Hundreds of unusual avian visitors are reported annually in Britain, but these are not accepted automatically. Since 1958 verdicts on these sightings, based on written descriptions, photographs and field sketches, have been given by an expert panel, the BBRC. The results are published annually in the monthly journal British Birds.

Although a non-voting participant in this process, Rogers played a key role in ensuring that it kept flowing smoothly during an era in which the volume of reported rarities mushroomed as birding became a widespread public leisure activity.

Born in Sutton Coldfield in 1932, the only child of the head brewer at Ansell’s Brewery, Birmingham, Mike Rogers was among the talented young birders who fledged from King Edward’s School after the mid-1940s. (Another was Bill Oddie.)

Rogers joined what is now the West Midland Bird Club (WMBC) in 1946. He was one of a young triumvirate of schoolfriends who cycled all over the region, their regular discoveries of unusual species earning them an early reputation. Already showing signs of the bird record analysis skills that were to be his forte, Rogers sat on the WMBC’s research committee from the age of 16 and became its secretary the following year. He was not only able to identify bird calls but also to mimic them. On one occasion he brought a flock of redshank to the ground in front of the group he was with by whistling a perfect rendition of their flight call.

Rogers spent his National Service in the Army Intelligence Corps, based in Trieste at a difficult period of the Cold War. Thereafter he served in the Metropolitan Police from 1958 to 1981, rising to detective sergeant.

In 1978 he became the Sussex Ornithological Society’s bird recorder, and was also appointed to the BBRC post that dominated the rest of his life. Soon descriptions of rarities — from white-billed diver from the Arctic to Baltimore oriole from North America — were pouring into his home at Sunbury, Surrey. He would then circulate them to the nationwide panel of “wise men”, and the eventual result would be the eagerly awaited annual Report on Rare Birds in Great Britain in British Birds.

His observations about bird identification, calls and behaviour were frequently published in the journal over the years. Though its content was unvaryingly serious, the Rarities Secretary occasionally slipped through with a burst of natural wit. In one article, a comment on the difference between the lesser and greater sand plovers, two very similar Asiatic shorebirds which only very occasionally reach Europe, he wrote: “The lesser sand plover, Charadrius mongolus, is quite a pleasing little bird. The greater, C. leschenaultii, strikes me as an ugly brute, with a body too small for its legs, a head too large for its body and a bill too large for its head. Perhaps, like the camel, the greater sand plover was designed by a committee.”

After he retired from the police, the BBRC became his full-time unpaid job. He also continued with his Sussex post until 1983, and became recorder for the Isles of Scilly, living from 1984 on St Mary’s.

Scilly was by then a mecca to twitchers. Hundreds invaded the islands from late September and their craving for entertainment during the long, dark nights spawned a festival atmosphere which drew Rogers out of the shadows that were so often his habitat.

Gatherings in pubs such as the Mermaid evolved into nightly packed shows in the cellar bar of the Porthcressa restaurant. At these Rogers, though a shy man, would be forced to centre stage to “call the log”, working through the British bird list, and the audience to shout out what species they had seen that day. This process enabled him to record masses of data each night.

In 1987 he moved to mainland Cornwall, settling in the tiny village of Towednack in West Penwith. To a reclusive nature like his, Scilly residency had become a nightmare. He could no longer cope with not being able to go out without strangers stopping to talk to him.

A mild stroke in 1991 did not stop him continuing to plough through the ever-mounting BBRC paperwork, although he admitted that it meant: “My fingertips don’t always do what my brain thinks.”

He also launched a new organisation, the Association of County Recorders and Editors, and became its secretary. This brought together all the officials of nationwide bird clubs who channelled records to him for BBRC decisions.

In 1996 he received his only honour, election as an Honorary Subscriber to British Birds, bestowed only 11 times previously in the journal’s then 89-year history.

Rogers was briefly married in the 1950s. He had no children.

Mike Rogers, ornithologist, was born on October 5, 1932. He died of lung cancer on October 10, 2006, aged 74.