Young Birders

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THE NEXT GENERATION Living the dream Think making a career of watching birds in a uniquely remote location is an impossible dream? <strong>Young</strong> naturalist Nicola Boulton has done just that… BY NICOLA BOULTON Nicola Boulton is a 27-year-old zoo biologist, and works as a wildlife guide and photographer on the western coast of Scotland. Follow her on Facebook: Nicola Boulton Photography FROM A VERY young age, I was lucky enough to know what I wanted to do with my life... see the world and all the awesome wildlife it had to offer. After graduation with a degree in Zoo Biology four years ago, I decided the best way to do that would be to pursue a career in wildlife tourism. Guiding is not only a great way to see wildlife yourself, but it works as a fantastic platform to educate others. It gives me an opportunity to permanently extend my education, learn as much as I can about an ecosystem, then regurgitate it to whoever is willing to listen. Growing up in the countryside, surrounded by farming and conservation land, meant that birds were in no short supply, so, as you can imagine, birding came fairly naturally to me. During my degree, I remember writing an assignment on the reintroduction of the UK’s largest bird of prey, the White-tailed Eagle, something I felt very passionate about. Looking at the map of its territory on Scotland’s west coast, some 480 miles away from me in Nottingham, I felt disheartened and that I might not ever see one. But after months of applying for work, I finally got a phone call for my dream job, working as a wildlife guide on boats just south of Oban. “Can you be here in 10 days?” the owner of the 12 February 2016
ONE TO WATCH... ALEX RHODES, 19 BW: What first got you interested in birds and wildlife? AR: I’m confident that my parents’ decision to move out of the city when I was just a year old led to my love for the great outdoors. Pinpointing my interest for birds is more difficult. It may have been as simple as picking up a book and thinking “hey these look far more interesting” than, say, a bunch of plants, but you also need to consider as a kid, with a short attention span, the fact birds are so visible and easy to encounter meant they were more captivating than any other creature. BW: Which bird surveys/conservation projects are you involved in? AR: I am a C-permit bird ringer under the BTO and send in sightings via the BirdTrack app. I’m passionate about communicating the natural world through the use of media, such as film and photography, and am currently working on a project looking at this very subject; young naturalists. Could your passion for birds lead to a career that takes you to places such as St Kilda? St Kilda has one of the world’s largest Gannet colonies Nicola Boulton Nicola Boulton BW: What has been your most memorable birding moment? AR: During my gap year, I was employed as assistant warden at Falsterbo Bird Observatory, Sweden, during autumn migration. I’d heard about the site’s historic migration counts of hundreds of thousands of raptors, and even read about records of more than a million Chaffinches in a day. But I was not expecting to see the mass migration – yes, migration – of Blue Tits. Flocks of them, reminiscent of a swarm of locusts, all uttering their pe-pee-ing calls in a cacophony, like something out of The Birds. There were days we’d have the mist-nets open from 6am and not stop ringing 1st-year females until dusk! BW: What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other young birders? AR: Get a T-permit and learn to ring birds! Not only will you gain the satisfaction that you are providing valuable scientific data, but you’ll start to notice subtle features in birds that never would have caught your eye-previously. Not only that, but you will experience a whole new level of mentorship from your trainer/ringing group members. Nicola Boulton Nicola now guides groups of birders on boat trips BW: If you could make one change to the UK’s environmental policies, what would it be? AR: The Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP. The whole system needs an overhaul and simplification with more focus on its conservation elements than the current watered-down, blanket subsidies, which have very little benefit for our wildlife. @Alex_RhodesUK birdwatching.co.uk 13
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