Birds Beyond Borders is a documentary seeking to understand more about red-listed cavity-nesting birds as they migrate from Europe to Africa. The film project started in 2021 when Common Swifts and House Martins were red-listed. At the time of writing, filming is underway in the East African region. With already […]
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Summer seems to be arriving with great strides, and the air is trembling with the heat even though the sunny June is still far from appearing. I am sitting in the shade of a gnarled olive tree, centuries of history branch out among its branches, giving me the most precious […]
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Gemma and James Shooter, with their two young children Brodie and Isla, and their rescue pup Ty, have embarked on an adventure of a lifetime. They’ve sold their home, and are campervanning around Europe in search of what ‘wild’ really looks like! Clear blue skies welcomed us to the shores […]
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I regularly traverse the four corners of the globe ostensibly on the search for urban birds which often leads me to the least likely of urban spots. When I got an invitation from the Falkland Islands Tourism Board to come for a visit I just could not resist. Every now […]
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During my professional life as The Urban Birder, I have been very lucky to have been invited around the world to some pretty special places to watch some amazing birds and other wildlife as well as to meet up with some equally amazing conservationists. I have also been fortunate enough […]
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Last weekend an event to celebrate the amazing work of the North Yorkshire Turtle Dove Project and Birds on the Edge Project took place at the stunning Castle Howard, in North Yorkshire. Castle Howard is one of England’s finest historic houses, set in a thousand acres of sweeping parkland dotted […]
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What does the Apollo 11 moon landing have to do with migratory waterbirds in Africa? Well, the link can be found in the optical equipment that was used during the successful mission to the moon in 1969 and the high-precision optical equipment that will soon be used by a network […]
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Freezing fog hung low in the air, a pale wintry cloak shrouding the treetop canopy at RSPB Minsmere Nature Reserve in Suffolk. I’d spent hundreds of hours on the reserve as a volunteer guide, learning about and photographing its varied wildlife, but this Saturday morning was somewhat different. We unfurled […]
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A painting like this huge panel in the Uffizi gallery in Florence is a feast for saint spotters. It was painted in the first decade of the 15th century, it is 5 m high and Lorenzo Monaco has painted 30 saints attending the Coronation of the Virgin. Most notably there […]
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Some people go Trainspotting or aeroplane spotting – I go saint spotting! You never know who you’ll find in a painting or a fresco in whatever church, chapel or tabernacle.Who’s you favourite saint? And who is your patron saint, the saint whose name you bear? And can you recognise him […]
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