In the sense of knowing how to find birds and where to watch them. My main talent is full access to rare bird reports from BirdGuides – well, not a talent really, more an asset – which gives me a gateway to the skills of the best British birders and twitchers. This puts the icing on the cake of more common, but still hard to find, species, which I do dig out by virtue of persistence and knowledge of local patches.
And not so local patches: my experience stretches from this corner of Somerset, through the Midlands and up to the Highlands of Scotland. I can also claim Hampshire, Sussex, Norfolk and the north-east, thanks to my extensive travelling. Hey, and further afield throw in California and Australia.
I can also pretty much recognise every species I see and, more important, hear. It takes odd behaviour or an out-of-place bird to throw me.
Yet strangely, after fifteen years of birding, I still think of myself as having so much more to learn. Perhaps that’s a talent too.
I’m happy to put such talents at your disposal if you’d like a personal guide to finding birds in any of these areas. Just fill in the form below and I’ll get back to you in a beat of a hummingbird’s wing, figuratively. It won’t cost you a bean either: for an introductory period, I’m not just cheap, I’m free.
