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| Ashley Grove - enterprising birder has made the world his oyster |
CAN you make a living out of watching birds, photographing them, giving talks and conducting tours?
Yes, judging by the impressive record of Warwickshire-based Ashley Grove who gave up selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door in order to carve out a new freelance career.
Operating, at first, from his own studio, his focus was on general photography - for instance, weddings and portraits of children, family groups and pets.
But in recent years, his work has been entirely wildlife-based.
He is recently back from his umpteenth guiding tour of Gambia - one of his favourite destinations along with such as other exotic locations as Trinidad and Tobago, Sri Lanka, Portugal, Hungary, Sweden and the Spanish Pyrenees (good for vultures!)
He regularly hosts popular five-days birdwatching breaks at hotels in Devon, the Scottish Highlands and other parts of the UK.
And he reckons to give no fewer than 50 talks - daytime or evening - per year to a wide range of organisations including WIs and RSPB groups (over the past decade he has spoken to no fewer than 56 of the latter - some of them no longer in existence).
Tonight he will be speaking in Gloucester, then on Wednesday in Market Drayton and in Southport on Friday.
Last night, he was a guest of the RSPB Grimsby group where he gave an entertaining illustrated presentation of some favourite birds - common as well as rare - that he has photographed at UK locations ranging from The Shetlands to the Scilly Isles and including patches nearer home in the West Midlands.
On Fetlar in the Shetlands, he never captured the close-up photographs he had hoped for of breeding red-necked phalaropes - they were too far away - but there was more than ample compensation soon afterward when he secured a cracking shot of a Terek sandpiper - the first record of the species for this part of the UK.
Other scarce birds he has snapped in Britain over the years include American robin, woodchat shrike, and squacco heron.
But, for Ashley, it isn't just about rarities.
He said it is too easy to overlook the captivating beauty in the plumage of everyday species such as blue tits, blackbirds, goldfinches and particularly the irridescence and spotting of breeding-plumage starlings.
Wetland birds have a particular appeal - not just in their own right but also because of the patterns of light, colour, reflection and movement that bounce off the water.
The evidence was provided in his superb shots of wigeon, tufted duck, pintail, pochard, mallard, avocet, turnstone, redshank, little ringed plover, Slavonian grebe, little grebe, kingfisher, glossy ibis, oystercatcher, purple sandpiper and coot.
He confessed a special spot for grebes. "There are just 27 species in the world," he said. "If I won on the Lottery, I'd go and see them all!"
Ashley described how the sex of goldfinches could be determined by the extent of red on their faces masks and queried whether it was right to describe blackcaps seen in the UK at this time of year as "overwintering" birds.
"It's more likely they are birds that have come year after having bred in Scandinavia," he maintained.
Having spent so much of his life watching birds, inevitably there have been curious moments.
Once, while photographing a particularly handsome male wheatear, he felt a whoosh past his left year.
A sparrowhawk had made a swoop for the wheatear which made to escape by scuttling down a rabbit hole.
To Ashley's surprise, the fleeing bird was actually followed down the hole by the hawk - but to no avail.
It came out of the hole empty-beaked and flew off to seek new quarry.
What of the wheatear? It emerged unscathed, moments later, and carried on feeding as if nothing had happened.
Ashley was asked if there was any species on the British list that had so far eluded him and that he would particularly like to see.
After reflecting for a few moments, back came the reply: "the corncrake".
However, he hasn't done badly. There are not many British birds he has missed.
When he reached his 50th birthday in 2018, he thought it would be nice to see 500 different birds over the next 12 months.
Did he achieve his target ?
"I did a lot of overseas travel that year," he replied. "I ended up with 867 - 10 per cent of the world's known species!"
Ashley can be contacted via experiencenaturetours@gmail.com.
His website is www.experiencenature.co.uk
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