My Birding Life

Kirsty Costa didn't grow up with binoculars around her neck. Her birding life began in the first week of Melbourne's pandemic lockdown, on a dawn walk with her dog when a strange, wide-eyed shorebird appeared in the reeds of her local wetland. It turned out to be a Latham's snipe, a species that migrates every year between Japan and Australia, and something about that discovery, a bird she'd never...

He's one of the most recognisable names in birding and he's spent 20 years making the case that you don't need to travel to wild, remote places to find birds worth watching. You just need to look up. Born and raised in Wembley, North London, David Lindo taught himself to bird as a child with no mentor and no one around him who shared the interest. That self-taught curiosity became a mission: get p...

What happens when someone who listens for a living turns their ears to the natural world? Branwen Munn is a professional DJ, music producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in West Wales and a birder with an infectious passion for the outdoors. In 2024, she embarked on a Big Year alongside her parents, travelling the length and breadth of the UK in search of as many species as possible. In 2026, t...

Jon Mason has spent almost four decades as a geography teacher, an Opticron ambassador, and to a growing audience on Instagram, sharing early morning birding moments from Otmoor and beyond. In this episode, Chris sits down with John to talk about a fascination with birds that started before he could walk, why he calls himself a birder rather than a birdwatcher, and how a heart attack a decade ago...

Suzy Buttress has been hosting the Casual Birder podcast for nearly nine years, built entirely around the idea that birding should be enjoyable, accessible, and welcoming to everyone. In this episode, Chris sits down with a fellow podcaster to hear how a childhood dream of being Snow White with birds on her hand turned into a 1,085-species world list, a husband she's converted into a bigger birder...

Tim Appleton MBE has spent decades shaping British birding, from building Rutland Water Nature Reserve from green fields to international acclaim, to co-founding the Global Birdfair to leading one of the UK's greatest conservation success stories: bringing ospreys back to England for the first time since 1847. In this episode, Chris sits down with Tim to hear the personal side of that remarkable j...

Most people don't go looking for birding. It finds them. In this first episode, host Chris shares how a period of serious burnout brought him outside and how watching birds quietly changed everything. That's the story behind My Birding Life, a brand new podcast where real birders share the moments, places, and birds that shaped them. Episode Takeaways: Why Chris started birding and why it genuinel...