The only trouble with only doing BirdFair for two days is as soon as you've "got into it" it's over before you know it.
After yesterday's sweltering heat Sunday was far more bearable. We were up bright and early and on site before half past nine. We wanted to go and see Ruth & Alan from the Biggest Twitch do their talk on the Joys of Birdwatching. I've never met them before despite being twitter friends for quite some time. It was quite some talk; a real tour de force of the simple joy of going bird watching. Their enthusiasm was infectious. It was a very well attended talk and it was easy to see why. One day we will have reached the point where we can go on one of their bird watching weeks. I can imagine it's quite an event; apparently according to Julian (of RSPB Conwy) there is quite a lot of cake too!
Our next talk was cancelled, which was a shame as it was Johnny Kingdom. Last year was a riot. This did give us a chance to have a wander around and talk to the people who we missed yesterday. We made it to the RSPB Stand, and had a good chin wag with the aforementioned Julian and Mark Avery. I finally met Andre Farrar having missed him when I visited The Lodge a few years back.
We completed our round of NGO's I am a member of by visiting the BTO stand and having a chat to Ieuan, another long-time twitter friend of mine. This year’s randomly joined NGO was the Butterfly Conservation Organisation when Chris Andrews (of RSPB Frampton Marsh) was moonlighting on their stand!
We then headed back to the Events Marquee for a BirdFair débutante. Martin Hughes-Games from Springwatch was on the stage. It was an excellent talk, with quite a lot of behind the scenes tales. As you can imagine it was packed out. We stayed in the tent for a new BirdFair quiz of Birdless Pointbrain, which was brilliant. It was based on the TV Quiz show Pointless if you hadn't figured that bit out.
The “celebs” were paired up with BirdFair Volunteers. It came down to a final "beak to beak" round between Nick Baker and Mike Dilger (we had bumped into Mike earlier who was in very fine fettle!). Nick made it to a very tough final round, where they had to find three pointless animals named after Pallas. They failed but it was testament to the 100 volunteers they had put the question too that there were so few pointless answers throughout the quiz!
There was one final event to attend and it was always going to be the highlight of the weekend. A stellar cast was to perform the Gruffalo live in the Events Marquee. We headed over early as it was always going to be mobbed. It was the case of spot the children amongst the adults, but there were a fair few around. They invited the little ones onto the stage as squirrels.
The whole show was hysterical, with everyone making up lines. Mike Dilger played the Mouse, Nick Baker the Snake, Rob Lambert the Fox and Dominic Couzens the non-specific Owl species. The Gruffalo could only be played by the one and only Bill Oddie. The whole thing was given some sense of professionalism by Lucy McRobert, who narrated.
I cannot add any more than the chap who was sat next to us, who said "I have been coming to BirdFair for twenty years and I have never laughed as much as that...” That’s the fair in a nutshell!
It was the perfect way to end a perfect BirdFair. I am already looking forward to August 19th 2016!!
All images © Anthony Walton