Wirral Bird Club - Speakers

Gordon Yates
Gordon has a life long interest in birds, starting when he was 4 years old, and joined the RSPB when he was 9. Now a full time photographer, he has made 30 one hour films in 30 years: and has filmed in lapland, Iceland, Greenland and Spitzbergen.

Valerie McFarland
Valerie has led bird watching tours worldwide. She served on the Council of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and maintains a deep interest and concern in conservation. She is also the author of the 'RSPB Guide to Birdwatching on Anglesey and Lleyn'.

Keith Offord
Keith established a passion for birds at an early age, and a childhood of birdwatching led to a particular interest in birds of prey. He studied bird of prey hunting behaviour at university as part of his Zoology degree. Although primarily a field ornithologist, he is also a keen photographer and has a wealth of slides to illustrate his talks. Each title is a careful blend of science, anecdote and humour and will appeal to both novices and experts alike.

Michael Leach
Michael has been a full-time wildlife photographer and author since 1977 and is now one of Europe's top professionals. He has travelled extensively in search of subjects, visiting some of the wildest and most remote areas on Earth.

Dave & Sigrun Tollerton
Dave and Sigrun have been keen nature photographers for many years; they photograph all forms of wildlife, but birds remain their favoutite. They have visited several countries around the world in pursuit of photographs. Many of the species present there are also found closer to home, such as the Grey Heron and the European Kingfisher.

Dr Tim Stowe
Tim started work in nature conservation for the RSPB at their headquarters in Bedfordshire in 1977 working on seabirds and oil pollution. His work expanded to study birds of Welsh uplands, sessile oak woodlands and then corncrake ecology in the Outer Hebrides. He moved to Scotland in 1991 to run the RSPB's north Scotland Regional office in Inverness where he led the team pioneering a new approach to working with remote rural communities, and overseeing species recovery work on corncrakes, sea eagles and woodland grouse.

Tim become the RSPB's Director Wales in 1997, based in Cardiff, where the advent of devolution in 1999 brought many opportunities to work with the newly created Assembly. Much of the work of his team in Wales has focussed on recovering the populations of some of the declining birds such as black grouse and chough.

David Cummings
David is a wildlife photographer and local historian living in Rowton, Chester. He was headteacher at Christleton County Primary School 1972-97. A well known local author with a wide a range of topics for talks and guided walks. His talk to the Club is the story of swans in the UK and of a swan family in Cheshire that he monitored for over a year.

Mike Roberts
Mike currently works as the Trees & Woodlands Officer with St. Helen's Council but has also been a Ranger working with communities in Halton and Warrington to improve their local environment. He went trekking in Nepal in the eighties and has since visited Canada, Peru, Costa Rica, India and Uganda to photograph wildlife. His talk will look at the wildlife, primarily birds, of the Spanish Steppe in Extramadura and the hills and mountains of Monfrague and the Sierra de Gredos.

Gwen Thomas
Gwen is the RSPB Community Talks Office for North Wales based at the Bangor office

Matt Thomas
Matt is a local wildlife photographer specialising in birds. He is employed at the Wirral Country Park, Thurstaston as a Ranger. His photographs are included in the advertising and promotional material for the Park.