Birding

This peninsula located 3 miles North of my home town of Weston-super-Mare was my local patch in the 1960's. Regular sightings included grasshopper warbler, whitethroat and stonechat, with unusual visitors: aquatic warbler and wryneck. I conducted a school project entitled "The Ecology of Sand Point" in 1966 which included a census of birds, mammals and plants. We revisited in 2014.

Exmouth, at the mouth of the R. Exe became my family home in 1972 and the Estuary a favorite local patch. At that time the mudflats were under threat from the development of a golf course, but common sense prevailed and it became a Ramsar site in 1992. The estuary attracts large numbers of migrating and over-wintering waders, as well as flocks of Brent geese. Egrets were a rarity in the 1970's but now Little egrets are regular visitors and Great egrets (photo) are occasional.

A week on a bird-banding course at Eyre on the coast of the Nullabor Plain , 30 miles from the nearest road. Several honeyeater species were ringed.

Two weeks of bird- and bat-banding on an Earthwatch project run by Alejandro Estrada and Rosamond Coates-Estrada at the Estacio´n de Biologi, Los Tuxtlas. A ferruginous pygmy owl was caught in a mist net and handled with care.

Thanks to contacts in Hungary and Romania, we got to spend 5 days in a small boat (6-seater) exploring the Danube Delta with a local guide. We navigated narrow channels through the nesting sites of herons and egrets, saw large flocks of great white and dalmatian pelicans in open water and finally ended up on the shores of the Black sea. We found an apparent hybrid between a Little egret and a Reef heron (but the photo here is a Great egret).

Neary Lagoon is my local birding patch since 2010 and home to several pairs of pied-billed grebes, which we sometime hear from our house (hence it is on my Garden List). Between 1966-7, I made several unsuccessful trips to Chew Valley Lake, Somerset in an attempt to see the vagrant pied-billed grebe. This species became the logo of the then newly-founded Bristol Ornithological Club as this individual was the first authenticated record in the UK.

See Arboretum page for details of nest-box trail.

Between 1980 and 2010, I managed a 1.5 ha (3 acre) Nature Reserve in Oadby, Leicester. A local farmer, Mr Duncan Lucas leased the land to the Leicester and Rutland Wildlife Trust in 1980 for a peppercorn rent and I became the honorary warden . Later, Lucas Marsh was acquired by Oadby & Wigston Borough Council and gained Local Nature Reserve status. The transfer was marked by an official opening with Mr Lucas, the Mayor and local MP in attendance. Amongst winter bird visitors were common snipe, jack snipe and woodcock. Redwing and fieldfare flocks numbered in the hundreds. Kingfishers bred in the adjacent ponds.