Farewell to enterprising British birder who watched more than 9,000 species on his global travels

                                                           

Tom Gullick - a lifetime of birding memories 

A MAN who pioneered overseas birding holidays has died aged 92 having reckoned to have seen more than 9,000 species during a lifetime of travelling.

As managing director of Clarksons Tours, Tom Gullick  was at the forefront of value-for-money package holidays in the 1960s, but, in later life, he went solo, partly running partridge shoots across 35,000 leased acres in the Spanish region of Ciudad Real and partly taking birding groups to Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

Described as 'a big lister' rather than a 'twitcher', he also ventured to Africa,  South America and other parts of the globe.

He was part of groups that rediscovered two species thought to have become extinct - the yellow-throated serin in Ethiopia and the Sao Tome grosbeak on an island off the African coast.

A landmark sighting was that of a Wallace's fruit dove on the island of Yamdena in 2012. This took his tally to 9,000 species.

By now he was well past the American, Phoebe Snetsinger, who had ticked 8,398 species before her death in 1999.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he said: "I don’t think there’s much aesthetic pleasure about it. 

"The pleasure is in the challenge and the achievement, the thrill when you see the bird. 

"I don’t have a favourite bird, I don’t think of it in those terms. One likes them all.

"I used to spend the best part of two months every year birding. 

"I soon learnt that you can’t grasshopper too much around the world - you’ve got to concentrate on certain areas. 

"I went on trips to Asia, Africa and South America, and realised I couldn’t personally take in sufficiently well all the different species all over the world, enough to find and identify them." 

Gullick's birding career began not in his family home in Margate, Kent, but, soon after the outbreak of the 1939-45 war, when his prep school was evacuated to North Wales.

Early highlights are said to have included climbing an apple tree to discover the nest of a hawfinch and swinging on a rope to view an  egg in the nest of a raven.

The latter particularly fascinated him because the markings seemed to be in the shape of a G - the initial of his surname.

Though never without a pair of binoculars, he slowed down in his 80s because he was getting gip from one of his knees, making it hard for him to climb hills.

The current record-holder is believed to be Claes-Gorran Cederlund with sightings  of 9,761 of the world's 10,700 or so species.  

                                                 

Letter in The Daily Telegraph