Index – Intro – Ch.1 – Ch.2 – Ch.3 – Ch.4 – Ch.5
Ch.6 – Ch.7 – Ch.8 – Ch.9 – Ch.10 – Ch.11 – Ch.12 – Ch.13
The idea for this blog stemmed from the confluence of two seemingly unrelated items: the acquisition of my first digital camera (even though the first specimen didn’t last long and was hardly ever used for producing bird pictures, see Tools of the Trade, Cameras). The second strand was me being roped into the committee of the South-East Wales RIGS Group, for which I was the designated webmaster and publicity officer, faute de mieux. After getting some advice on how to produce a cheap and easy-to-handle web design platform, I ended up with the WordPress.com platform, which suited my purposes sufficiently well. That was in July 2014, quite some time before I decided to spread my wings and create other blog sites on the same platform.
In the meantime, I had gone through three sets of digital cameras of the Canon IXUS series, had upgraded to a slightly better Canon Powershot for our holiday in Botswana, and gradually came to the realisation that I had accumulated a fair number of bird as well as other nature pictures. Still the spark came from two bird-related instances in the summer of 2015. The first one was capturing a decent shot of a reed bunting on the Isle of Sheppey, identifying it, and being confounded that, only weeks later, I couldn’t remember what type of bird it was. The final spark which made me decide to start a bird blog was when I was sitting in a bird hide in the Oxwich Bay nature reserve and saw a swallow come to feed its young. That was the first blog entry, and after posting a number of local pictures I came to realise that I was sitting on a substantial treasure throve of images from more exotic locations such as the Galápagos Islands, Botswana and Brazil. This was sufficient to maintain a regular blog rhythm until I had found my feet in exploring other locations both in the UK and in Southern Europe where I could supplement my cache of bird pictures.
This is not a list blog**
As of 14 June 2020, this blog shows images of 504 types of bird, 372 of which were taken in the wild. My comparison with the British Ornithologists’ Union’s British Bird List shows a certain disregard for the rules of proper lists, since it matches the British List with any bird that I’ve seen anywhere and whether in the wild or in captivity. This type of comparison yields 221 matches, whereas if I did things properly, only 157 matches would be valid.
Index – Intro – Ch.1 – Ch.2 – Ch.3 – Ch.4 – Ch.5
Ch.6 – Ch.7 – Ch.8 – Ch.9 – Ch.10 – Ch.11 – Ch.12 – Ch.13
(*) with a wink to Charles Darwin’s “Origin of species”
(**) with a wink to PIL’s “This is not a love song”
Marnix's Bird Gallery 