Bird Fair 2014 - Saturday

Two years on I revisit Rutland Waters and the British Birdwatching Fair.

It was a far easier journey from Boston to Rutland than I thought it would be. Our SatNav said 1 and half hours, but it took us just over an hour to get there. We arrived at about 10am. We quickly met up with our friend, surrogate sis in law and fellow blipper Bev in the Marquee tent. We caught the end of Jonathan Scott's talk on the wildlife of Kenya. What we were really there for was A Question Of Stork, which is always great fun, and part of the Bird Fair Tradition is Mike Dilger's charades round. It never disappoints, although Bill Thompson III's Egyptian Goose charade will live long in memory.

I am glad we got down the front for the quiz as the marquee tent was packed with over 700 people for the next talk, which was Chris Packham's Malta Massacre lecture. Despite audio problems it was a spine tingling talk, fuelled by a lot of passion and hefty slab of anger. It was also very thought provoking. Especially as we heard from a member of bird life Malta and a resident of the island who were passionately trying to fight against the hunting lobby. They had both been threatened and have had various intimidation tactics used against them. There was a standing ovation at the end of the presentation, which was well deserved.

We had a wander around and met various people in between the next couple of talks we wanted to see. I managed to chat to Mark Avery, Iolo Williams, Mike Dilger, Matt Merritt amongst others.

We went to see the second quiz of the day which was hosted by Bill Oddie .. that was a slow painful slog, but hey ho ...

We finished the day with Mike Dilger's Trials And Tribulations Of A Wildlife Presenter. Hugely entertaining and great way to end off day one of my two day visit to this years Bird Fair.

I've put a handful of photos up on Flickr from day one ...