Podcast · Leisure & Travel

My Birding Life

by Chris Ducker · English · Leisure & Travel

My Birding Life is the podcast for anyone who's ever been stopped in their tracks by a bird. Every episode, host Chris Ducker sits down with a passionate birder for an honest, warm conversation about the hobby we love. From conservationists dedicating their lives to protecting species and habitat

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 44 min
Latest: 14 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026 · 46 minNew

Nashville Birding, Hokkaido and Fish Owls with Graham Gerdeman

Short on time in a new place and want to see as many birds as possible? Hire a local guide! That’s how a long morning of lifers in Nashville Tennessee turned into this conversation with Graham Gerdeman, a volunteer eBird regional reviewer and working wildlife photographer. You’ll hear how backyard birds and an embarrassing sapsucker mis-ID sparked a lifelong obsession, what it takes to document a rare bird properly, and the story of a sleepless night in the Hokkaido cold with Blakiston’s fish owls. Episode Takeaways: Embrace Your Mis-IDs: Get one wrong and you’ll never forget the bird. Go…

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Earlier episodes 20 most recent

E20 · 7 Oct 2026 · 46 min
Life on the Marsh… and in Flight with Simon Barnes
Simon Barnes spent over 30 years as chief sportswriter at The Times. His books on birding, including How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher and On the Marsh , have introduced more people to the joy of birds than almost anyone's in recent years. Now in the high 30s to mid-40s for books published, he's just released his latest, How to Fly . Simon joins Chris from his hut on the edge of his Norfolk marsh, where a marsh harrier, a pair of visiting cranes and a newly singing reed bunting have all been keeping him company. We talk about the Cetti's warbler that helped sell him the house, what he learned from…
E19 · 30 Sep 2026 · 43 min
From Childhood Spark to Conservation Career with Mya Bambrick
Mya Bambrick has been birding since she was eight. She's now a BTO Youth Ambassador, winner of the BTO's Young Ornithologist of the Year Award and a familiar voice on Radio 4's Tweet of the Day. She works full time in conservation with Birds of Poole Harbour, and she's on a mission to get young people hooked on the hobby we all love. In this episode, Mya takes us from a street dance academy in Crawley to a hide at Warnham Local Nature Reserve, where an osprey and a kingfisher changed everything. We talk about the bird camp that shaped her path, ringing nightjars for a group of young birders,…
E18 · 23 Sep 2026 · 39 min
The Creator Life of a Birdwatching Baddie with Tamerra Jones
Tamerra Jones, aka the Birdwatching Baddie, picked up birding almost by accident during lockdown, looking for something slower-paced to get her outside. Three years on, the Central Florida-based birder has racked up hundreds of species, built a joyful, unapologetically fun Instagram following, and become a genuine advocate for making the hobby feel accessible to everyone. In this episode, Chris and Tamerra dig into how she went from lockdown curiosity to serious lister, why field experience and mentorship beat any app or book, and what it means to bring her full self into a hobby that hasn't…
E17 · 16 Sep 2026 · 38 min
Living the Life of a Wetland Ranger with Ajay Tegala
Ajay Tegala started volunteering on a nature reserve at 15 years old and never really left. Now the ranger at Wicken Fen, one of the National Trust's most historic reserves, Ajay has spent his career on the front line of British conservation, from seabird colonies on Blakeney Point to reed bed management on the fens. He's also a familiar face from Countryfile and Springwatch, and the author of two books, The Unique Life of a Ranger and, most recently, Wetland Diaries. In this episode, Chris sits down with Ajay for a wide-ranging chat about childhood ducks and grey herons, the long,…
E16 · 9 Sep 2026 · 44 min
Birding, Lifers, Travel & Restrooms with Hannah Buschert
Chris is joined by Hannah Buschert of Hannah & Erik Go Birding, one of the biggest names in the birding podcast world! Hannah's story starts almost by accident — a required biology of birds course in college, taught with the help of David Attenborough's Life of Birds , was all it took to hook her for good. From there she worked as a park ranger at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, picked up a serious taste for far-flung birding destinations, and eventually settled on the Oregon coast. Hannah and Chris dig into how Hannah & Erik Go Birding got started back in 2018 on long drives through…
E15 · 2 Sep 2026 · 57 min
Life on the Road, Chasing Rare Birds with Nigel & Kayleigh
This week Chris sits down with Nigel and Kayleigh Cheetham, the couple behind Backyard Aviary Adventures. What started as a lockdown project, building an aviary and filming the golden pheasants, doves, and finches they raised in it, has since morphed into car camping, then a van conversion, and now full-blown twitching trips all over the UK chasing rare, scarce, and unusual visitors to our shores! The conversation covers how each of them found birding, the highs and hazards of the twitching community, and where they stand on their second consecutive UK big year. Episode Takeaways: How They…
E14 · 26 Aug 2026 · 48 min
Low-Carbon Birding and No Binoculars with Sara Humphrey
This week Chris sits down with Sara Humphrey, aka Sussex Sara, a wildlife photographer, low-carbon birder, and one of the most distinctive voices in UK birdwatching right now. Sara doesn't drive. Every birding trip she takes, from the Cairngorms to the Lake District, is done by train, bus, or on foot, which means her whole approach to finding wildlife has had to become far more strategic than most birders ever need it to be. Sara and Chris talk through what low-carbon birding actually looks like day to day, her mission to see and photograph some of Britain's hardest and most threatened…
E13 · 19 Aug 2026 · 32 min
Making the Ordinary Extraordinary with Andy Green
Recorded live on the Whinchat stage at Global Bird Fair, this is the second episode we're publishing from that day, bringing Chris together with wildlife photographer Andy Green, a Kent-based creative known for his ultra-detailed close-up bird photography, co-host of The WildX Podcast alongside Adam Jukes and Mike Phelps, and founder of The Wild Den, an online community built around nature, creativity, and mental wellbeing. After turning 40, Andy set out to make wildlife his full-time work, and he's never looked back. In this conversation, Chris and Andy dig into the New Forest moment that…
E12 · 12 Aug 2026 · 33 min
Dreaming Wild for 100 Years with Nick Acheson
Recorded live from the Whinchat Podcasting Stage at Global Bird Fair 2026, sponsored by Swarovski Optik, this episode is the first of two shows Chris recorded in front of an audience at the fair. His guest is Nick Acheson, naturalist, writer, broadcaster, and a regular contributor to BBC Springwatch, known for pairing sharp field knowledge with a genuine gift for storytelling. Nick is based in North Norfolk, where he's a passionate advocate for conservation, and is the author of two books: The Meaning of Geese (2023 East Anglian Book of the Year) and This Wild Dream . The conversation…
E11 · 5 Aug 2026 · 39 min
How the Wildest Ones are Living Life with Simon Owen
Simon Owen is a Manchester-based filmmaker and photographer, the founder of Standby Productions, and the creative force behind Wildest Ones, a YouTube series that interviews people whose lives have been shaped by wildlife and the natural world. In this episode, Simon talks Chris through a childhood spent on RSPB stopovers with his dad, a detour through skateboard filmmaking that quietly taught him the patience wildlife photography demands, and the string of hard years, a business hit hard by COVID, a breakup, that sent him back outdoors and, eventually, into making Wildest Ones. The…
E10 · 29 Jul 2026 · 46 min
Embarking Upon a Great British Bird Quest with Beth Sheils
Beth Sheils has built a brilliant corner of the birding world on Instagram under the name Beth The Bird Nerd, helping people, whatever their experience level, get outside and fall in love with what's around them. In this episode, her first ever podcast interview, Beth talks Chris through a birding life that started on canal walks with her dad in Bootle, the British Bird Quest she's steadily working through, and why she'd rather watch the pigeons in her garden than chase something flashy. The conversation covers her Instagram journey, the mental health lift she gets from getting outside with…
E9 · 22 Jul 2026 · 44 min
One Family and a Lifetime of Birding with Becca Heywood
Becca Heywood is a third-generation birder. She learned to watch birds alongside both her father and her grandfather and today she's turning that inheritance into something new, sharing South London's urban wildlife with the world. By day she works in inclusion and equity at WWF-UK, and that same lens shows up throughout this conversation with Chris. Chris and Becca trace her path from childhood trips down the M5 spotting buzzards, through a teenage stretch of quietly shelving the hobby for fear of not being "cool," to relaunching her passion at the very end of 2025 as a way to build…
E8 · 15 Jul 2026 · 43 min
Living a Life in the Wild World with Simon McCabe
This week Chris is joined by wildlife filmmaker, presenter and storyteller Simon McCabe, who has spent over 30 years behind the camera bringing the natural world to life — from the British countryside to the wilds of Botswana. Simon writes, shoots, edits and narrates all of his own films, and his YouTube channel has become a go-to for anyone who wants their birding served up with genuine warmth and a great voice for it. Chris and Simon trace Simon's path from childhood fishing trips and watercolour painting, through photography and into filmmaking, before diving into stories from the field —…
E7 · 8 Jul 2026 · 46 min
How the Weekend Birder was Born with Kirsty Costa
Kirsty Costa didn't grow up with binoculars around her neck. Her birding life began in the first week of Melbourne's pandemic lockdown, on a dawn walk with her dog when a strange, wide-eyed shorebird appeared in the reeds of her local wetland. It turned out to be a Latham's snipe, a species that migrates every year between Japan and Australia, and something about that discovery, a bird she'd never known was living on her doorstep, changed how she saw the world around her. That single sighting became Weekend Birder, now one of the most-listened-to science and nature podcasts in Australia,…
E6 · 2 Jul 2026 · 50 min
Celebrating 20 Years of the Urban Birder with David Lindo
He's one of the most recognisable names in birding and he's spent 20 years making the case that you don't need to travel to wild, remote places to find birds worth watching. You just need to look up. Born and raised in Wembley, North London, David Lindo taught himself to bird as a child with no mentor and no one around him who shared the interest. That self-taught curiosity became a mission: get people living in urban areas connected to nature through birds, wherever they are in the world. Along the way he's been named one of the seven most influential people in wildlife by BBC Wildlife…
E5 · 25 Jun 2026 · 53 min
How to Plan a Big Year of Birding with Branwen Munn
What happens when someone who listens for a living turns their ears to the natural world? Branwen Munn is a professional DJ, music producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in West Wales and a birder with an infectious passion for the outdoors. In 2024, she embarked on a Big Year alongside her parents, travelling the length and breadth of the UK in search of as many species as possible. In 2026, the National Trust chose her to front their year of community birding events across West Wales, leading walks, spotlighting a Bird of the Month, and building something genuinely special along the…
E4 · 18 Jun 2026 · 49 min
The Early Birder Catches the Worm with Jon Mason
Jon Mason has spent almost four decades as a geography teacher, an Opticron ambassador, and to a growing audience on Instagram, sharing early morning birding moments from Otmoor and beyond. In this episode, Chris sits down with John to talk about a fascination with birds that started before he could walk, why he calls himself a birder rather than a birdwatcher, and how a heart attack a decade ago changed the way he spends his time. From spider's webs at sunrise to a nightingale nobody could see, this is a conversation about noticing more, rushing less, and why the simplest birds are often…
E3 · 11 Jun 2026 · 43 min
How to Boost Your Birding Joy with Suzy Buttress
Suzy Buttress has been hosting the Casual Birder podcast for nearly nine years, built entirely around the idea that birding should be enjoyable, accessible, and welcoming to everyone. In this episode, Chris sits down with a fellow podcaster to hear how a childhood dream of being Snow White with birds on her hand turned into a 1,085-species world list, a husband she's converted into a bigger birder than herself, and a gentle but very real competition over who gets to 191 first. From a wooden spoon worm-feeding contraption to paradise riflebirds in Australia to a missed crane on Big Day that…
E2 · 11 Jun 2026 · 48 min
The Origin of the Global Birdfair with Tim Appleton MBE
Tim Appleton MBE has spent decades shaping British birding, from building Rutland Water Nature Reserve from green fields to international acclaim, to co-founding the Global Birdfair to leading one of the UK's greatest conservation success stories: bringing ospreys back to England for the first time since 1847. In this episode, Chris sits down with Tim to hear the personal side of that remarkable journey — how the Bird Fair was born from a visit to the Game Fair at Belvoir Castle, what it was actually like to show up to a job where the reserve didn't exist yet, and what a life spent in…
E1 · 9 Jun 2026 · 9 min
Welcome to My Birding Life
Most people don't go looking for birding. It finds them. In this first episode, host Chris shares how a period of serious burnout brought him outside and how watching birds quietly changed everything. That's the story behind My Birding Life, a brand new podcast where real birders share the moments, places, and birds that shaped them. Episode Takeaways: Why Chris started birding and why it genuinely changed his life What My Birding Life is all about and who it's for The kinds of guests you'll hear from - conservationists, lifelong birders, content creators, and everyday people who found birds…

About My Birding Life

My Birding Life is a English leisure & travel podcast from Chris Ducker. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Chris Ducker
Language: English
Category: Leisure & Travel
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 44 min
Latest episode: 14 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1896901697

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