Since moving to Newcastle in 1983, I have developed a strong interest in the birdlife of the Hunter Region. It's an incredibly diverse region, with a great many different habitats present. It also is at about the southern limit for many northern species and the northern limit for many southern species plus many western birds come in especially in times of inland drought. As a result, more than 450 species have been recorded in the Region (including out to sea).
My interests extend way beyond just "seeing local birds". I am determined to add knowledge and understanding. From 1993 to 2018 I prepared annual bird reports (a total of 25 of them) for the Hunter Region, a massive task each year. I retired from that job after completing the 2017 bird report in late 2018, only to put my hand up almost straight away to become one of the replacement editors of HBOC's ornithological journal The Whistler. My mission is to open up authorship of articles in the journal to a wide range of locals i.e. to encourage people into science a bit more. So far (to mid 2025) there have been 88 different authors of Whistler articles.
I have been slowly but steadily researching the rich and fascinating ornithological history of the Region. John Gould spent considerable time locally, for example. I have published four papers about the Hunter's ornithological past. Another "breakthrough" was to develop a way for producing distribution maps for birds in the Hunter Region (see under Publications for more details; the methodology has been further refined since then).
I do what I can to promote birdwatching in the local community and help local and visiting birdwatchers. One example is that once per month over 2016-2018, I was interviewed about something to do with birds on Port Stephens FM community radio. Another is a project with HBOC to prepare birding route brochures describing places to find birds within local areas (Rob Kyte does the all-important design work, I did the content for the first ten or so of them; others now are writing the content for birding routes about their areas of interest). Other examples have been to help organise display stand for HBOC at events such as the Tocal Field Days, Australasian Bird Fair, Welcome to the Waders, Biodiversity Day - I leave that activity mostly to others now though.
More recently (since the beginning of 2020),
I prepare a "Featured Bird" fact sheet for HBOC members each month. I write the content and chose the photos, and then Rob Kyte makes it all look great. Each fact sheet focuses onto a common species in the Hunter Region. They're all on the HBOC website: https://www.hboc.org.au/membership/featured-bird/.