British, Irish & WP Birding

I was born in the early 1980s and have been birding since the age of five. Frodsham and the Dee Marshes hold my first birding experiences while trips to Norfolk, Scotland and the Welsh coast in the early days helped to ignite the flame.

Originally enthused by the late Mike Ellis, I’ve had the good fortune to have extremely supportive parents who supported me in the hobby from an early age. Until university in the late 1990s, Cheshire was my birding home and I watched both Frodsham and Inner Marsh Farm as intensively as I could whilst at school.

During the early 1990s, the weekend trips to local Cheshire sites started to become interspersed with visits to more far-flung locations in pursuit of specific species. By the mid 1990s and as an impressionable teen, I’d become immersed in the British twitching scene. From 1996 to 2004 I managed to record 300 species each year, and on a couple of occasions exceeded 350 species.

Birding in Britain and Ireland has always been my main passion and, as well being the youngest person to reach 500 species, I’ve managed either by luck or judgement to have several rarities find me along the way.

Currently my main interests are my local London patch at Rotherhithe (for my sins), birding extensively in the Western Palearctic and any day that I can get birding on the west coast of Ireland or the Azores.

I’m currently Inner London bird recorder, sit on the Kent Rarities Committee, the London Rarities Committee and help provide daily Western Palearctic news for Netfugl as well as writing the monthly Western Palearctic roundup for Birdwatch magazine.

If you would like any further information then please feel free to contact me.

Thanks

Richard