THE GUIDE

Gower Wildlife Walks is operated and led by Ed Hunter.

I grew  up in Lancashire where my local birding patch was Rivington near Horwich  – an excellent area of habitats from reservoirs, woodlands, moors and Red Moss land. In these early years the discoveries of breeding Long Eared Owls, Lesser Spotted woodpeckers, a vagrant Spotted Sandpiper and a singing Golden Oriole saw me firmly hooked on searching for birds whenever I could in my local area.

In 1989, I moved to Cardiff and my new patch was the Rhymney Great Wharf and the Taff / Ely Estuary before it was flooded for Cardiff Bay and I have been exploring Glamorgan and beyond ever since with a particular interest in the Gower.

In 1996, I spent a lot of time  out in the Straits of Gibraltar. Initially I was a resident volunteer for Migres helping to study the numbers of  bird of prey and Storks migrating across the Strait to Morocco and later  I was  involved with Radio tracking of Black storks in Andalucia.

Having tasted foreign birding I began many extensive trips in search of birds and wildlife to much further afield countries such as India, Nepal, Sikkim, Namibia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, Poland, Germany, France, Turkey , Israel, Canada and the USA but I have always returned to Wales where I have lived in Glamorgan between the travels. 

My local birding has led to many  rare Welsh finds. In 2015, I discovered the first breeding pair of  Iberian Chiffchaff ever for the UK – a vagrant from Spain.

I documented this exciting occurrence and was awarded the Carl Zeiss Award for its documentation in 2016 and this paper which is  interactive with sound and  video was published in the scientific journal ‘British Birds’ in 2018. I am currently an active committee member of the Gower Ornithological Society which I am enjoying very much.

I am very passionate about birds and natural world and a keen photographer with a lot of interest in migration, vagrancy, birds of prey and identification of birds.