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Naturetastic does BirdFair 2025!

  • Writer: Henry Day
    Henry Day
  • Aug 11
  • 9 min read

In July we went to Global BirdFair which was a brilliant event, even though I'd been twice before this was my first time actually camping on site which was a special experience because you're there when the site is opening, and you can have breakfast, lunch and dinner all on site. This year was also great because I met loads of brilliant young people interested in nature who all congregated at the event held in the UK’s smallest county… Rutland. In this blog I'm going to take you through day by day what I did, from attending talks to looking at stalls to dancing at the BirdFair disco.. and even giving my own talk on Citizen Science.

We arrived at the campsite on Thursday night and made our way to our ‘Glamping’ Bell tent. The tent was all nicely laid out for us to just drop our bags and get into bed, but not until we had met up with Dex and his Mum and headed out for a sunset Bat Walk overlooking Rutland Water.


 

Day 1 – A busy day of talks

 

The first day of BirdFair started with us waking up, heading to the shower block and then going on to site before it opened to get our breakfast from the food stalls. We were already bumping into people we knew and had a quick chat, walking 5 meters then another chat. The first talk we went to was superb and it was hosted by Toby Carter talking about how Zeiss support Conservation projects around the world. His talk was raised to another level because many of his friends were in the audience and kept heckling him, which was funny… a great start to this year’s BirdFair! After his talk we rushed over to the neighbouring tent, funnily enough called the Curlew tent, as my next talk was being given by Mary Colwell who founded the Charity, Curlew Action, and she gave an amazing talk on all the different types of curlews around the world including the extinct ones. I really enjoyed her talk because she delivered a whistle-stop tour of the world of Curlews, giving loads of information and it was delivered in a friendly and accessible way.  This was shortly followed by another incredible talk by Nick Baker about his childhood and how he got to where he is now. As I’m still a child I recognised lots of things he described as my own interests and activities, and his talk was really informative.

Next, we went to the podcast stage to see Asshole Animals with Alice talking to Dr Sean McCormack about Ticks which was hilarious and quite personal! This was followed by a talk in the Plover tent by Steven Moss which was incredibly interesting as he spoke about how technology has changed in birding, from ancient telescopes to apps on your phone!

Then after a fully packed morning of talks and podcasts, we headed to get some lunch!

After lunch we went to see Elle Kaye in the Youth Conservation Hub organised by the Osprey Leadership Foundation (OLF), this was a brilliant talk which was really good, and she tackled some hard problems about working in the conservation sector and wellbeing. Then we drove to the other side of Rutland Water and joined the OLF’s Osprey Cruise on the Rutland Belle for couple of hours. Dr Tim Mackrill from the OLF led the cruise and although it was a slow start for spotting Osprey, in the end we think we saw five in total, including 3 ospreys at one time! On the boat we sat with a group of other young conservationists and had a great chat with them about all sorts of things! We got back in time for the last 10 mins of Peter Harrison’s talk about protecting the albatross, which was the main charity BirdFair was raising money for this year, I met up with Dexter who said Peter spoke from the heart for two hours. At the end of the talk I also met Roy Dennis who is a legend in the birding world for his work with raptor reintroductions.

 

Before bed, we headed out for another walk to the edge of the lake with Dexter and his mum, taking the bat detectors and binoculars to see what we could see, but mostly we just chatted about our exciting day!

 


Day 2 – On stage!

 

I started the second day off by meeting up with some my friends and we headed off over to the Owl Tent to, funnily enough, do some owl pellet dissection's this was really fun pulling apart the pellets and seeing what skulls and other bones we could find. This was followed by a nature walk led by Elle Kaye and Harry Read for Leica. We went down to the edge of Rutland water and back up it was brilliant and so informative. On the walk we saw Osprey at a distance, and a variety of birds along the walk. The weather was brilliant, and there were lots of butterflies around... inlcuding a Gatekeeper on the gate!


This was followed by Wildlife Kate’s talk which was delivered brilliantly, after this we began a Junior Conservation Hub marathon starting with the RSPB's youth panel talking about all the different things they have done and working with other youth councils. Then we listened to Luke Massey talk about small scale rewilding and about Wild Finca, which is their home in Asturias, Spain that they are restoring themselves. Next up in the Hub was Emily Hunt who gave a writing workshop and was really good about getting us involved in writing all sorts of things including poems. I plan to write more at home because she didn't have enough time for us to do all the things we wanted then it was my turn to give a talk in the Youth Hub…

My talk this was the thing I was nervous about from the second I woke up – My talk was all about Citizen Science, why it is important in Conservation and how young people (but in fact anyone) can get involved. This is a topic I am passionate about, I really enjoy taking part in Citizen Science and learning about nature in this way, I also volunteer with the Monitoring and Research team for the Wildlife Trust Beds, Cambs and Northants and recently became a Junior Sunset Survey ambassador for the Bat Conservation Trust.

Because I was part of the Media and Conservation panel in the Youth Hub last year, I was asked by the Osprey Leadership Foundation if I had any ideas for a session this year – I was really keen to give my own talk, so submitted a proposal, explaining my idea. When Becky confirmed my speaking slot,  I was so pleased!

Just before I started my talk, the tent started to fill up, and my nerves about no-one coming disappeared. There were lots of people in the audience who I knew, which was cool too! Some people even had to listen from outside the tent!

I felt nervous and had butterflies in by stomach but when I started talking, I had a rush of energy and was really excited to be delivering my talk. The talk was 40 minutes long with questions from the audience; to make it a bit more manageable, I prerecorded three short interviews with experts on different Citizen Science topics.

My first interview was recorded on Zoom with Beccy Speight, who is the CEO of the RSPB. I spoke to her about the Big Garden Birdwatch and how to get involved in Citizen Science at any age.

My second pre-record was with Parvathy Venugopal who heads up the surveys for the National Bat Monitoring Programme for the Bat Conservation Trust. I spoke to Parvathy about the importance of surveying the bat population, we spoke about the Sunset Survey which anyone can take part in, and also the Waterway’s Survey which requires some equipment and knowledge of bat surveys.

Finally, I interviewed Henry Stanier from the Wildlife Trust BCN while we were out and about on the Great Fen. Henry makes use of a lot of volunteers to collect the data for his Monitoring and Research Projects from Water Vole Survey to Raptor Counts.

By including these short interviews, I was able to take a little break but also share some really important insights from these great conservationists.

There were a few questions from the audience, as well as feedback from people that I have inspired (or reminded) them to take part in Citizen Science opportunities.

From what I've heard from other people it went really well. I'm really happy with how it went, and I even got a standing ovation from the crowd!


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My Full Talk!!

After my talk and all the questions and chatting, to celebrate, I went over to get some ice cream from Gander’s Goats, which is brilliant goat’s milk ice cream, and this gave me time for a little break for a bit to decompress after my talk.

Then I spent time chatting with friends and going round the stalls, before heading to the front of the Osprey tent for one of my favourite parts of BirdFair – Into the Wild Room 101. The is part of the podcast hosted by Ryan Dalton and Nadia Sheik, and it is a comedic chat with their panel to decide on what ‘naturey’ things are going to be locked in the Room 101 Vault for ever! This year, I got to carry the vault up on to the stage… the vault is a wooden box locked shut with everything previously sent to Room 101 in it! It was really fun with everyone clapping as I carried it up on to stage (this was my first time on the main stage, but hopefully not my last!).

This year’s panel was Mary Colwell, Megan McCubbin and Simon King, and the highlight was Mary, who founded the charity Curlew Action, trying to put the Curlew in Room 101 – the audience reaction was funny.

In the evening Dexter, Henry, Benji and I formed a quiz team to take part in Steven Moss’s Global BirdFair Pub Quiz night and we did pretty well scoring 45/72 which we were pleased with!

After the quiz Benji, Dex and I (the ones who were staying on site) went out for a little walk before Dex and I went to the one, the only, GBF Disco organised by Ryan, Nadia and Oscar which was brilliant as we all kind of just chilled, danced to the songs we wanted to and had a brilliant time.

This day there wasn't much time to have a look round the stalls as there were so many great talks, but as I mentioned we had a quick look from in Robin and the Puffin (artists) tent as well as both the optics tents, this was cool because we had a chilled out time having a nice little stroll talking to people on the stalls.


 



Day 3 – All good things come to an end

 

We woke up on the last day and we had to pack up the tent, which was sad as this meant we were leaving at the end of the day and not coming back for a year. We kicked of the day with Harry Read and Ed Towler giving us a sneak preview of their latest ‘Gone Feral’ film all about searching for lynx in Finland! Whilst my parents went off to listen to James Stevensf talk about the Hebrides (I hope they are planning a new holiday) I went off to see Benji and Indy in the YCH talk about the charity challenges they have done, and it was brilliant to hear about all the money they have raised for amazing charities.

This was followed by one of my favourite podcasts, ‘How Many Geese’ a comedy nature podcast that in this episode had to try and extract humour from the Asian songbird trade and the black market for birds! A tough one even for Jack and Roddy, but it was really interesting and sad hearing about the trade, but they did manage to make it really entertaining.

Then we had a little break and looked through the Nightingale tent where Button and Squirt (Dex’s Mum’s stall) were set up and I was intrigued to see what else was in there. And then rushed into the Osprey tent to see Megan McCubbin, Lucy Lapwing, Humprey Keeper and Jack Baddams talk about their work on BBC Springwatch – it was really interesting hearing them interview each other about their roles and some funny stories. I was able to visit the Springwatch set last year, so could relate to many of the places, stories and people they spoke about.

Back to the YCH to listen to Harry Read (with a picture of a lynx behind him from the making of the film we watched earlier), his talk was very good and fascinating about how they put together their stories, and how important it is to capture people’s interest.

To finish off the talks for this year, I listened to the Conservation in Media panel which was very good! This is the panel I was on last year, and was hosted by Ajay Tegala again, this year the panellists were Katie Monk, Şeniz Mustafa, Rebecca’s Butterfly Farm and Benji Fallow. It was great to see the panel from a different view this time. Afterwards, we all met up and had a final look round all the marquees one last time. In the last hour I was franticly rushing round trying to find everyone to say goodbye to and everyone was a bit sad with the bird fair blues.

 


GBF was incredible this year and was a really different experience because we were camping and also this year I met loads of people my age and now I have a bigger friendship group of young nature lovers that now includes Dexter, Benji, Rebecca and Henry - it was great meeting all these new people and hanging out with them and looking round all the marquees, spending time exploring the nature reserve and BirdFair site, going to talks with them and even seeing some on stage.


I loved this year’s Global BirdFair, and I am looking forwards to next year already!

 

Some useful links to people and organisations mentioned!

Global BirdFair - https://globalbirdfair.org

Osprey Leadership Foundation - https://www.ospreylf.org



Button & Squirt - www.buttonandsquirt.co.uk


Henry / Bovey Birder - www.instagram.com/the_bovey_birder


 
 
 

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