Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Birdfair 2016

Or, continuing the title of my previous post, what all birders do.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending Birdfair once again. I worked most of the time in the Israeli stand, mainly promoting Champions of the Flyway.

Before the storm began

Friday was pretty hectic

We launched Champions of the Flyway 2017 - we will work together with Doğa Derneği, Birdlife Turkey, to prevent illegal killing there. It was an honour to meet their president Dicle Kilic - what an impressive woman. Looking forward to work with her in the future.
It was also great to see how the global reach of COTF extends from year to year. This year, COTF2016 Knights of the Flyway decided to donate a pair of Swarovski SLC to Aves Argentinas - here Hernan Casañas recieves the bins from Swarovski's Dale Forbes and Bill Thompson III. Hopefully, this will help them in their efforts to save Hooded Grebe from extinction.


It felt almost like I was back in Israel - great to spend time with my friends and colleagues who came over from Israel - Dan, Jonathan, Meidad and Amir.

We had wifi!

Thanks to my son Uri for the snap


I participated in two major events this Birdfair. On Friday night I spoke in the main RSPB events - Frontiers of Migration, in tribute to Martin Garner. I joined Paul French and Keith Clarkson who were both brilliant. Adam Rowlands hosted the event - he did a great job.


On Saturday I represented OSME in Bird Brain of Britain. It was great fun and I shared 1st place with Ashley Banwell, but all contestants did a great job. I was happy to learn that my prize went to support a youth camp on bird migration in Azerbaijan.


As always, Birdfair is an amazing place to meet old and new friends. It is like a neverending conversation, lots of laughs and good fun. One of my personal highlights was when I met the legendary D.I.M. Wallace, together with my good friend Mark Pearson from Filey - we talked about Basalt Wheatears. Ian actually read the article I wrote for Birdwatch some months ago.


I had little time to walk around but as always I was captivated by the mural created by some of the world's finest wildlife artists:





I think my family had a good time too


Till next year, good night.

1 comment:

  1. Having been to the Eilat Migration festival was wonderful to see Yoav, Dan and Jonathan together again. You've just got to go.

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