Photography by Neville

I’m Peter Fearon from Liverpool, UK and I am a Science teacher in Secondary Education. Before I became a teacher I worked in Canada for two years setting up and running the Ausable Bird Observatory, splitting my time between education, research and training.

I cant remember exactly how old I was when I started ringing, but I do have fantastic memories of being woken up by my father in the middle of the night whilst on holiday in Portugal to ring a Red-necked Nightjar. Before that I remember being able to suprise my father when I asked if the bird in the net was a Sedge Warbler, at our local sewage works, nine months after I saw my last one. At some time after this, I think I started school!

I blame my father for the fact that I am not a professional footballer or astronaut, two of my early ambitions, preferring to ditch football practice to go to the sewage farm and ring birds with him. I had the perfect introduction to ringing, as a child with my father, long summer holidays ringing birds in Portugal and surrounding myself with friends from the ringing community.

As a child, ringing was just something that I enjoyed, it wasn’t until I grew older that I started to appreciate the scientific value of the work that we do. Spending time with experienced ringers such as my father Pete Fearon, Adrian Blackburn and Paulo Tenriero really helped my development and understanding of birds. The bottom line is that I love ringing, I love being outdoors and I believe in the reasons why we ring birds. Most of my friends thing I’m a bit crazy, but at the same time they tell me that they are jealous, when I ask why they tell me that I have a ’cause’ that I believe in, that I am passionate about and they admire that.

I couldn’t tell you precisely how many birds I have ringed, or an accurate total number of species because I am not someone who is driven by personally ringing as many species as possible, although seeing new species and the challenges of identification and ageing/sexing them are really exciting. In North America I would estimate I have ringed over 110 different species and about 130 in Europe.

Ringing birds can allow you to study a multitude of facets of a birds life, from migration and population dynamics, to breeding site fidelity and dispersal as well as behaviour. From the collection of ringing data, the effects of environmental change, both natural and human-influenced, can be investigated as birds are brilliant indicators of environmental change.

Most of the work that I was doing in Canada was looking at migrating populations of neo-tropical migrants and most of the work that I do in Portugal is monitoring sub-Saharan migrants and the data that we collect can indicate the condition of the wintering grounds, the breeding success - which can be linked to habitat loss or other environmental pressures, to name but a few.

More topically, migration data from ringing ducks and geese was used by the BTO to inform government agencies on the potential spread of bird ‘flu. Whilst the threat can be looked at as relatively minor in hindsight, at the time the BTO had a significant amount of data from which to provide information and best target preventative measures.

I have travelled to North America, Southern Europe and to Oman in the Middle East to ring birds as well as being active in the UK. I still do a lot of my work with my father in South-West Lancashire, ringing Barn Owls, cannon-netting ducks and ringing a number of woodland sites out the year. In the summer, before I am found in Portugal, I can sometimes be found with my father at a local sewage works catching Swifts. My father, with my help when I can, rings about 1/3 of all Swifts ringed in the UK, the Swift is a species that he is especially passionate abou, but is sadly a species in decline.

In Canada, with the help and inspiration of Dr David Brewer, I helped set up the Ausable Bird Observatory and in the two years that we operated in South-West Ontario, we were able to ring over 15,000 birds of 120 species, six of those species being designated as ‘at risk’. Unfortunately, due to financial and political reasons, the observatory now no longer exists, however we acheived our aim of proving the significance of the Lake Huron shoreline as an important corridor for migrating birds.

I travel to Portugal at least once a year to visit my great friends and ring birds, mainly trans-Saharan migrants. I owe a lot to great friends such as Paulo Tenriero, Joao Paulo Lopes, Rui Brito and Antonio Periera whose hospitality and knowledge have always given me a great time. Recently I have talked about my work in Canada at the 4th Technical Meeting of Ringers in Portugal and I am involved with the work of APAA - the Portuguese Association of Ringers (http://www.apaa.pt).

It is hard to choose a single favourite, but I do have a ’soft-spot’ for these: