About

I’ve always been drawn to birds. I joined bird walks at Dinton Pastures Country Park in Berkshire as a 10-year-old back in 1980 and was a Junior Voluntary Warden there in my mid-teens.  Birding took a back seat through university but was re-kindled in the late 1990s. As I began to travel abroad, the thrill of racing around the UK to see vagrants seemed to fade. Now with wife and family,  life is very local. I recorded the bird species I came across in the 8 years that we lived in Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire in the Birdless Cuddesdon Blog and participated in local bird surveys for the British Trust for Ornithology, combined with the occasional foreign trips, often teaming up with Richard Campey or Ian Reid.

I spent 8 autumn weeks on Lundy Island between 2006 and 2014 with Richard, Tim Jones, Tim Davies and James Diamond hunting for migrants.  Birds I have found on Lundy include Rose-coloured Starling (extra points as it was on my birthday), Richard’s Pipit, Yellow-browed Warbler, Common Rosefinch, Golden Oriole, Wryneck,  4 Ortolan Buntings and Quail. Since 2019 I have visited Shetland in autumn with various combinations of Andy Last, Dave Lowe, Mark Merritt and Jason Coppock. In October 2022, Andy and I found a Blyth’s Reed Warbler on Unst and two Hornemann’s Arctic Redpolls on Mainland (record accepted by BBRC). A trip in 2023 saw us find Barred Warbler and Little Bunting on Unst.

Caucasus Mountains, Georgia, April 2014
Sichuan, China, May 2016
2022 in Shetland

I am one of the authors of the species accounts for the annual Oxfordshire Bird Report and in 2017 competed in an Oxfordshire Big Day, with Dave Lowe and Andy Last. Our failure to set a new record for bird species seen in 24 hours in Oxfordshire will spur us on to future glory!

Most of my county birding has been local patch birding, so opportunities to find rare birds have been limited. My county list can be found in the sidebar of this blog, my county finds include a flock of 5 Black-necked Grebe in 2002; a Ring-necked Duck in 2004 (the 10th county record); Waxwing flocks in 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2016; a Ring Ouzel in Cuddesdon in 2010; Oxfordshire’s first-ever winter record of Whitethroat in January 2012; a Little Gull and a Ring Ouzel in 2017 and a Smew in 2018. 

In early 2019 I began regularly watching the small Lye Valley nature reserve (and the adjacent Southfield Golf Course) in Headington, Oxford. Things began when Dave Lowe and I found a Pied Flycatcher (a county rarity) in August 2019. Highlights since include a second Pied Flycatcher, a singing Grasshopper Warbler, flyover Oystercatcher and Common Scoter, a couple of Jack Snipe, plus the first Oxford City record of Corn Bunting since 1980! Even more remarkably for a site with no standing water, were 4 fly-over Bar-tailed Godwit, several Great White Egrets and a superb Whooper Swan. One of the many pleasures of regular local patch coverage has been establishing that Tree Pipits (a scarce bird in the county) are annual migrants to Southfield Golf Course in urban Oxford.

In recent years, with many others, I have come to enjoy bird photography. It helps capture the moment and provides a useful identification record. I am certainly no professional with the camera, but I have had pictures published in Birdwatch magazine, Dutch Birding and in the Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds (2018). I have also been awarded a “Notable Picture of the Week” by Birdguides (2019).  In 2021 I became the eBird reviewer for Oxfordshire. Birding has been a fantastic springboard: first to drawing and painting in my younger years, later to photography and video, travel and environmental politics. It has shaped me and continues to inspire me.

This website is a personal record of the adventure that birding has brought me.

Tom Bedford, April 2016.

Finland 2015
With Richard Campey in Oman 2015
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