The Biking Birder Bounces Back

It is time for another blog from Sarah....

--------------------------------------

I have now been an Intern at Frampton Marsh for almost two months and during this time I have had the opportunity to meet many interesting people. Many of whom have travelled hundreds of miles in the pursuit of their passion for birds. However one visitor has a particularly cool story, Gary Prescott, also known as the Biking Birder.

He is currently taking part in The Big Year competition for birders, the aim of which is to see who can identify by sight or sound the largest number of species of birds within a specified area. It started in America as early as the 1930’s and has only become more popular since. Some including Prescott take this one step further and go green. This means taking on the challenge whilst making as little environmental impact as possible, called the Big Green Big Year (BIGBY). The biking birders aim is to get the most species in Europe, a title he shared in 2010 with Chris Mills of Norfolk. During that year he travelled to all of the RSPB (Royal society for the protection of birds) and the WWT (The wildfowl and Wetland Trust) reserves, covering thousands of miles.

I saw him most recently a couple of weeks ago, looking remarkably chipper for a man who had spent the previous night camping in a graveyard. He’ll often camp along the way, and as he said, he wasn’t exactly bothering the neighbours! I had the opportunity to have a chat with him this time, and actually ask him why he does it. This year’s target is to beat the current holder of the European title Ponc Feliu, which currently stands at 304 birds. However this is not his only goal, his main drive (no pun intended) is to raise as much money for the charities he cares about as possible, which are the RSPB, WWT, Asthma UK and Chaskawasi-Manu, a project giving the children in a village in Peru the opportunity to go to school and get an education. As you talk to him you can see the passion he has for these charities and what a great way to support them. He has funding pages for each of these which I’ll attach at the end. He’s always looking for new ways of raising money for the charities he supports, so if you spot him now you’ll have a choice of a lovely range of pin badges too.

The man himself!

So for 2016 he has a plan, a leaner version of his previous attempts with fewer out of the way reserves in order to reach this year’s goal of 305 to regain the European title and seems well on his way to achieving it. Gary's current year list may be seen on the Bubo listing site:  http://goo.gl/wF4NjN  you can follow his progress on his blog http://bikingbirder2016.blogspot.co.uk/ which includes updates of his total bird count as well as some stories of his adventures along the way. We are particularly happy to say that Frampton Marsh provided a significant milestone along the way, with bird number 200! And as always the very best of luck, a win would be very well deserved.

 
Gary's photo of the reserve

Fundraising pages

RSPB - https://goo.gl/rzcyId

Asthma UK - https://goo.gl/OKjIcw

WWT - https://goo.gl/qZtuuR

Chaskawasi Manu Project - http://goo.gl/sCt0dr