Bernard Tucker was the founder of the OOS; since 1951 the Society has held, jointly with the Ashmolean Natural History Society, an annual lecture in his memory. Since 1996, the Lecture has been sponsored by British Birds magazine (of which Bernard Tucker was Editor). A list of past speakers is given below.
| Year | Speaker | Topic |
| 1951 | Philip Brown | RSPB Reserves |
| 1952 | Niall Rankin | Wildlife in South Georgia |
| 1953 | R. P. Bagnall-Oakeley | Passage Migrants and Vagrants in Norfolk |
| 1954 | G. K. Yeates | A Bird Photographer in Iceland |
| 1955 | Eric Hosking | Bird Photography |
| 1956 | R. S. R. Fitter and R. A. Richardson | The Identification of Waders |
| 1957 | John Barlee | Some Problems of Bird Flight |
| 1958 | K. Williamson | Recent Developments in Bird Observatory Work |
| 1959 | R. M. Lockley | The Lives of the Seabirds |
| 1960 | Lord Alanbrooke | Birds in Holland |
| 1961 | E. M. Nicholson | Ornithology and the Future |
| 1962 | C. C. Doncaster | Scandinavian Birds |
| 1963 | D. Lack | Watching Migration by Radar |
| 1964 | R. E. Moreau | Australian Birds and their Ecology |
| 1965 | B. Campbell | Pied Flycatchers in the Forest of Dean |
| 1966 | N. Tinbergen | Aspects of Predation |
| 1967 | A. C. Perdeck | Some Aspects of Migration |
| 1968 | James Fisher | The Pleistocene Overkill |
| 1969 | David Snow | Birds and Fruit |
| 1970 | G. Waterston | Bird Protection in Scotland: Operation Osprey |
| 1971 | Sir Hugh Elliott | A Bird Census Plot in Tropical Africa |
| 1972 | Prof. R. A. Hinde | Nest Building Behaviour and the Problem of Instinct |
| 1973 | W. H. Thorpe | The Role of Vocalisations in the Social Life of Birds |
| 1974 | J. P. Harrison | Thames Transformed |
| 1975 | D. B. Hunt | Birdwatching in the Isles of Scilly |
| 1976 | J. Parslow | The Role of the RSPB |
| 1977 | R. Treleaven | The Peregrine Falcon |
| 1978 | I. J. Ferguson-Lees | The Seychelles |
| 1979 | Eric Simms | Suburban Birds |
| 1980 | Ian Newton | Pesticides and Birds of Prey |
| 1981 | Donald Watson | Upland Birds in a Changing Landscape |
| 1982 | Michael Rowntree | From Cassington to Corfu |
| 1983 | James Monk | Editorial Matters |
| 1984 | David Snow | The Fruit-eating Habit in British Birds |
| 1985 | W. D. Campbell | Birds, Bugs and Berries |
| 1986 | Max Nicholson | How Ornithology has Moved On 1936-1986 |
| 1987 | Richard Fitter | Black Woodpecker - British Bird or Not? |
| 1988 | Malcolm Ogilvie | Islay - Geese and Conservation |
| 1989 | Jeremy Greenwood | Birds as Agents of Natural Selection |
| 1990 | Robert Gillmor | Bird Art and Illustration |
| 1991 | Christopher Perrins | Mute Swans: Their Ups and Downs |
| 1992 | Jonathan Kingdon | The Rare Endemic Birds of Africa |
| 1993 | Prof. John Krebs | Bird Brains: Are Birds Intelligent? |
| 1994 | D. I. M. Wallace | Fifty Years in the Field |
| 1995 | Chris Mead | Ringing around the World |
| 1996 | Robin Prytherch | The Buzzard: A Success Story |
| 1997 | Prof. David Parkin | Splits and Lumps and the British List |
| 1998 | Rob Fuller | Woodland Birds in Britain and Europe: from Primeval Forest to Coppiced Woodland |
| 1999 | Tony Marr | The Agony and the Ecstasy: Atlantic Ocean Seabirding |
| 2000 | John Brucker | Bernard Tucker and Ornithologists of the 20th Century |
| 2001 | Prof. Nick Davies FRS | Cuckoo Tricks with Eggs and Chicks |
| 2002 | Dr Janet Kear OBE | Cavity Nesting Ducks |
| 2003 | Hugh Boyd | British Ornithology 1940 to 2040 |
| 2004 | Dr Andrew Gosler | Yet even more ways to dress eggs |
| 2005 | Pat Monaghan | Grow Now, Pay Later, Long Term Consequences of Conditions During Early Life in Birds |
| 2006 | Pete Potts | Greenshank Migration |
| 2007 | Prof. Angela Turner | Swallows |
| 2008 | Prof. Tony Fox | What makes for a successful alien? Observations on introduced wildfowl |
| 2009 | Michael Marquiss | Case Studies with Predatory Birds |
| 2010 | Guy Anderson | Sparrows - possibly the best birds in the world |
| 2011 | Nigel Collar | A Species is what I say it is |
| 2012 | Chris du Feu | 40 year of Integrated Population Monitoring in Treswell Wood |
| 2013 | Dr Tim Birkhead | Bird Sense: What it's like to be a bird |
| 2014 | Prof. Ian Newton | Bird Migration |
| 2015 | Dr Ken Smith | Roads to Recovery - history of the RSPB |
| 2016 | Dr James Pearce-Higgins | Birds and Climate Change |
| 2017 | Prof. Tim Guilford | The Shearwater's World |
| 2018 | Prof. Richard Gregory | Saving Nature |
| 2019 | Dr Jenny Dunn | Conserving Turtle Doves |
| 2020 | Prof. Martin Collinson | Molecular Birding: the New ‘New Approach’ to Identification |
| 2021 | Prof. Juliet Vickery | The Challenge of Conserving Birds that Cross Continents and Cultures |
| 2022 | Dr Charles Deeming | Understanding the functional properties of bird nests during incubation |
| 2023 | Prof. Jennifer Gill | Bird Migration in a Changing World |
| 2024 | Prof. Claire Spottiswoode | Honeyguide-Human Cooperation: The natural history of a human-bird mutualism |