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Roger - fan of folk-rock (and Man U) |
A BUMPER turnout is in prospect for the Lincolnshire Bird Club’s annual meeting at the Admiral Rodney Hotel in Horncastle
on March 20.
The guest speaker will be Dr Roger Riddington, long-serving Editor of the
authoritative British Birds magazine,
who is coming back to his home county, Lincolnshire, from the
Shetlands where he and his family are based.
The
son of a self-employed milk roundsman, Roger grew up and went to school in the Alford
area where he discovered the joys and challenges of birdwatching while exploring
the fields and wood around his home.
He was lucky to receive plenty of encouragement from an old schoolpal of his
father, namely the late Ted Smith, driving force behind the founding of Gibraltar
Point Nature Reserve, Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and many other nature-associated
initiatives.
After impressive A-level results, Roger won a place at Oxford University where his
degree subject was Geography.
Following graduation, he was poised to take a job in Cambridge with global
accountancy firm Arthur Andersen, but decided, instead, to take a PhD second
degree, researching movement and dispersal in great tits.
This proved to be the springboard for a career in natural sciences and
ornithology which included four years as warden on Fair Isle.
To this day, though he has travelled extensively, Fair Isle remains his
favourite birding location.
At the annual meeting, Roger will doubtless talk about his life and work as
Editor (for the past 17 years) of British
Birds which is a five-days-a week
job. He also contributes to the annual Shetland Bird Report.
Highlights
of his career include unexpectedly encountering what was the third UK record of thick-billed
warbler on Out Skerries on September 14,
2001.
Lowpoints
include having his Zeiss Dialyt 10x40 binoculars, a 21st birthday present, and
his Bushnell Spacemaster scope stolen in Seville at the end of the first day of a 1989 holiday in Spain.
During
his presentation, Roger may perhaps also reveal whether he has yet had the
opportunity to realise a long-held ambition - to watch spoon-billed sandpipers
in their breeding grounds on the Chukchi peninsula in Russia.
Off duty, he likes the music of Scottish folk-rock singer-songwriter Malachy Tallack,
who also lives on Shetland, and books by the food writer, Nigel Slater.
As
he confessed to fellow birder Keith Betton in an interview which was published
in 2015 in the book Behind The Binoculars
(co-authored by Mark Avery), Roger is a Manchester United fan.
The AGM starts at 7.30pm, and there is no admission charge.