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Bewick’s Swans<br />
Greater Flamingo<br />
ONE TO WATCH...<br />
OSCAR DEWHURST, 20<br />
BW: What first got you<br />
interested in birds and wildlife?<br />
OD: Growing up I always<br />
showed some interest in nature.<br />
There are photos of me feeding<br />
ducks in our local park, poring<br />
over my dad’s large hardback copy of an AA field<br />
guide to the birds of Britain, and one of me showing<br />
my grandma (for about the 1,000th time) my<br />
favourite photo in a wildlife photography book, which<br />
depicted a Grizzly Bear about to pluck a Salmon out<br />
of mid air from a North American river. I have been<br />
birding and watching wildlife since I was 10; in fact I<br />
still remember my first outing with a pair of<br />
binoculars. It was to Chiswick House Park with my<br />
dad, on Christmas Day 2004. Armed with his old pair<br />
of 8x25s and a book given to me two days earlier by<br />
my grandma, we clocked up a fairly paltry total of 16<br />
species. I was hooked.<br />
Buiten-Beeld / Alamy<br />
Starling<br />
Kevin Elsby FLPA<br />
Luke Massey<br />
BW: Which bird surveys/conservation projects<br />
are you involved in?<br />
OD: My photography takes more time now than<br />
pure birding, but that said, I enter most of my records<br />
into Birdtrack, and at university in Durham we are in<br />
University Birdwatch Challenge for the first time, so<br />
we’ll see how that goes!<br />
BW: What has been your most memorable<br />
birding moment?<br />
OD: The first morning I spent up a canopy tower in<br />
the Amazon rainforest, where I was spending two<br />
months staying at a research station photographing<br />
wildlife there. The sounds as the forest woke up were<br />
amazing: Forest Falcons, toucans dueting in the<br />
canopy, the unmistakable Screaming Pihas and many<br />
more, all to the background noise of a troop of howler<br />
monkeys in the distance. Add that to the view of<br />
almost uninterrupted forest for hundreds of miles in<br />
nearly all directions, and that’s why it’s my most<br />
memorable!<br />
BW: What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to<br />
other young birders?<br />
OD: Find a patch! It’s great to be able to follow it as<br />
the seasons change and you’ll start to notice things<br />
you wouldn’t otherwise. The thrill of finding your own<br />
birds is far greater than seeing ones others have<br />
found, and patching means the most mundane birds<br />
can be huge rarities!<br />
BW: If you could make one change to the UK’s<br />
environmental policies, what would it be?<br />
OD: I’d love to see a real commitment to tackling<br />
climate change. Things like reducing support for<br />
onshore wind and solar power, yet increasing<br />
subsidies for fossil fuels the UK’s oil and gas don’t fill<br />
me with hope. Nor does the reduction in incentives to<br />
buy more environmentally friendly cars and disposal<br />
of the green homes scheme.<br />
birdwatching.co.uk 5
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