Bird Watching

I have travelled all over England, Wales and some of the Scottish Highlands in search of different birds.

I have positively identified 356 species of British birds and 362 from the whole world (completely thanks to an 8 week working trip to Canada in the winter of 1997).  When I have the time and the inclination I will travel to other places and increase my world list, a colleague of mine currently has a world list of 2017 species (out of a possible 9000+) so this has become a target to try and match (ha ha).

I also run a bird watching 'league' for a group of friends who all used to work at the same factory.  This adds a bit of extra fun to the hobby although some are far more serious bird watchers than others. It does make life a little more interesting seeing who has been where and what they have seen.

I do not like to be classified as a 'twitcher' although to most people that is the only word they know to describe ALL bird watchers.  In reality there are many different areas of interest within bird watching and twitching is one of them.  For the uninitiated a twitcher is someone who is only interested in seeing as many bird as possible (similar in some ways to train spotting) within a particular area. Some stick to a County, some to the British Isles, others as the fancy takes them.  After all it takes all sorts to make a world!

There are still a lot of British birds I have not seen and there are alwyas rarities that turn up from time to time so who knows where this will take us.

I have recently taken more of an interest in bird and wildlife photography and some of the results of this are shown on my other website .