My Birding Life

Luke Whitrow has only been birding for around 18 months, but looking back, he’s been a closet birder most of his life. In this episode, Luke tells Chris how a green woodpecker on the golf course and an orange bird he couldn’t name set him on the path to birding properly, and eventually to starting his own YouTube channel. The two new-ish birders compare notes on documenting the journey rather than...

Ella Curry didn’t take the obvious route to becoming an ornithologist. She grew up in the New Forest chasing insects, studied English and sang as a choral scholar, and only found her way to birds after a misclick on a university website and a Facebook post that changed everything. Now she’s got her dream job, her dream village in Herefordshire, and a reigning title as her team’s garden bird list c...

Paul and Joe Scorey are a father and son birding duo. Chris first met them at the Global Bird Fair, then went birding with them at MigFest in Spurn. Paul’s birding goes back to the 1970s. Joe, now 16, has been at it since toddlerhood, and the pair are deep into their second Big Year in a row. In this chat, they share how the hobby has shaped their relationship, why they keep (mostly) friendly comp...

Kate MacRae, better known as Wildlife Kate, is one of the best people out there at bridging the gap between birds and the rest of the world. She does it with livestreams and a network of cameras across her wet woodland in Carmarthenshire, South West Wales. Her setup has been featured on BBC Springwatch and Countryfile. In this episode, Kate takes us from a black-and-white nest box camera hooked up...

Short on time in a new place and want to see as many birds as possible? Hire a local guide! That’s how a long morning of lifers in Nashville Tennessee turned into this conversation with Graham Gerdeman, a volunteer eBird regional reviewer and working wildlife photographer. You’ll hear how backyard birds and an embarrassing sapsucker mis-ID sparked a lifelong obsession, what it takes to document a...

Simon Barnes spent over 30 years as chief sportswriter at The Times. His books on birding, including How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher and On the Marsh , have introduced more people to the joy of birds than almost anyone's in recent years. Now in the high 30s to mid-40s for books published, he's just released his latest, How to Fly . Simon joins Chris from his hut on the edge of his Norfolk marsh, where...

Mya Bambrick has been birding since she was eight. She's now a BTO Youth Ambassador, winner of the BTO's Young Ornithologist of the Year Award and a familiar voice on Radio 4's Tweet of the Day. She works full time in conservation with Birds of Poole Harbour, and she's on a mission to get young people hooked on the hobby we all love. In this episode, Mya takes us from a street dance academy in Cra...

Tamerra Jones, aka the Birdwatching Baddie, picked up birding almost by accident during lockdown, looking for something slower-paced to get her outside. Three years on, the Central Florida-based birder has racked up hundreds of species, built a joyful, unapologetically fun Instagram following, and become a genuine advocate for making the hobby feel accessible to everyone. In this episode, Chris an...

Ajay Tegala started volunteering on a nature reserve at 15 years old and never really left. Now the ranger at Wicken Fen, one of the National Trust's most historic reserves, Ajay has spent his career on the front line of British conservation, from seabird colonies on Blakeney Point to reed bed management on the fens. He's also a familiar face from Countryfile and Springwatch, and the author of two...

Chris is joined by Hannah Buschert of Hannah & Erik Go Birding, one of the biggest names in the birding podcast world! Hannah's story starts almost by accident — a required biology of birds course in college, taught with the help of David Attenborough's Life of Birds , was all it took to hook her for good. From there she worked as a park ranger at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, picked u...

This week Chris sits down with Nigel and Kayleigh Cheetham, the couple behind Backyard Aviary Adventures. What started as a lockdown project, building an aviary and filming the golden pheasants, doves, and finches they raised in it, has since morphed into car camping, then a van conversion, and now full-blown twitching trips all over the UK chasing rare, scarce, and unusual visitors to our shores!...

This week Chris sits down with Sara Humphrey, aka Sussex Sara, a wildlife photographer, low-carbon birder, and one of the most distinctive voices in UK birdwatching right now. Sara doesn't drive. Every birding trip she takes, from the Cairngorms to the Lake District, is done by train, bus, or on foot, which means her whole approach to finding wildlife has had to become far more strategic than most...

Recorded live on the Whinchat stage at Global Bird Fair, this is the second episode we're publishing from that day, bringing Chris together with wildlife photographer Andy Green, a Kent-based creative known for his ultra-detailed close-up bird photography, co-host of The WildX Podcast alongside Adam Jukes and Mike Phelps, and founder of The Wild Den, an online community built around nature, creati...

Recorded live from the Whinchat Podcasting Stage at Global Bird Fair 2026, sponsored by Swarovski Optik, this episode is the first of two shows Chris recorded in front of an audience at the fair. His guest is Nick Acheson, naturalist, writer, broadcaster, and a regular contributor to BBC Springwatch, known for pairing sharp field knowledge with a genuine gift for storytelling. Nick is based in Nor...

Simon Owen is a Manchester-based filmmaker and photographer, the founder of Standby Productions, and the creative force behind Wildest Ones, a YouTube series that interviews people whose lives have been shaped by wildlife and the natural world. In this episode, Simon talks Chris through a childhood spent on RSPB stopovers with his dad, a detour through skateboard filmmaking that quietly taught him...

Beth Sheils has built a brilliant corner of the birding world on Instagram under the name Beth The Bird Nerd, helping people, whatever their experience level, get outside and fall in love with what's around them. In this episode, her first ever podcast interview, Beth talks Chris through a birding life that started on canal walks with her dad in Bootle, the British Bird Quest she's steadily workin...

Becca Heywood is a third-generation birder. She learned to watch birds alongside both her father and her grandfather and today she's turning that inheritance into something new, sharing South London's urban wildlife with the world. By day she works in inclusion and equity at WWF-UK, and that same lens shows up throughout this conversation with Chris. Chris and Becca trace her path from childhood t...

This week Chris is joined by wildlife filmmaker, presenter and storyteller Simon McCabe, who has spent over 30 years behind the camera bringing the natural world to life — from the British countryside to the wilds of Botswana. Simon writes, shoots, edits and narrates all of his own films, and his YouTube channel has become a go-to for anyone who wants their birding served up with genuine warmth an...

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...