The British Birdwatching Fair

The British Bird watching fair is held at Rutland Water every year of which my wife and I have been visiting since 2002. It is a Mecca for all things to do with Wild Birds and nature in general. It follows a similar format to most large outdoor venues with massive marques,catering supplies,portable toilets and the usual stalls which are ready to take your hard earned money....but very friendly they are! The increasing number of stalls which showcase wildlife holidays is increasing every year so we now have to limit our time there as the amount of national drinks handed out can leave you slightly light headed.

The many tents include most of the major optics sellers where it is great to be able to test a lot of optics all together. I bought my first real set of optics. Leica 10x42BR after seeing them in 2004 at the fair.

Lectures and talks are also included in the entrance fee and are of a very good standard with a lot of topics being discussed. I would imagine that most cravings for info would be satisfied as topics can cover Conservation Work, Holidays Watching Wildlife, Photography & Digiscoping and even the lesser Digibinning,

    Year                                                     Project Target

                                                       2008                               Saving the World's Critically Endangered Birds

                                                       2007                              Saving the World's Critically Endangered Birds

                                                       2006                                          Saving the pacific parrots

                                                       2005                              Saving Gurney's Pittas and their Forest Home

                                                       2004                                   Saving Northern Peru's Dry Forest                                 

                                                       2003                                Saving Madagascar's Fragile Wetlands

                                                        2002                             Saving Sumatra's Last Lowland Rainforests

 A special lecture is held on a Friday night at a venue outside of the Bird Fair and this is often a well known personality in a field linked closely with Wildlife or it's many surrounding topics. In 2004 I was lucky enough to see Lars Jonsson my favourite bird artist...by a mile! Sadly after taking many pictures of him at work my computer failed that year and I lost all my images I had taken. I will give a few links at the bottom of the page to sites I hope you will find of interest

                               Year                                Speaker                                                        Title

                               2008                     Sir David Attenborough                 "An Evening with Sir David Attenborough"

                               2007                             Simon King                                           "A life in the wild"

                               2006                             Ian Wallace                                   "Swansong and other ditties" 

                               2005                          Richard Mabey                                         "A natures cure"

                               2004                            Lars Jonsson                                   "Painting birds in the field"

Pictures Of Friends, Relatives and the odd celeb old & new

                     Mandy,Dot,Andy                                        Howard,Siwan                            Ken,Andy,Carol,Ste, Mandy

Sir David Attenborough