1- How did your birdwatching interest start?

I was raised by parents with a general interest in nature, nothing too specific, just enjoying nature whilst walking and camping on holiday. Even with untrained eyes we managed to see a Red Kite and Raven over the Welsh hills and Dippers in a Swiss stream. In those years I was lucky enough to live on the edge of a forest in the south of the Netherlands. More a pine plantation that a proper forest but we still had a lot of birds around the house. Very common ones most of the time, birds like Greenfinches, Robins, tits and the occasional Great Spotted Woodpecker, but during winter sometimes something unexpected turned up on the feeding table. This was especially true during the cold winter of 1978-1979 when the deep snow drove many birds towards gardens in search of food. One morning when I was eating breakfast I noticed a brightly coloured finch on the birdseed that I had put out some hours earlier. I didn’t recognise this bird, got my fathers Peterson’s birdguide from the shelf, found the section with finches and with one eye on the bird and the other on the pictures identified this new visitor as a Brambling. I had never seen this species and thought the fact that a bird from northern Europe chose our garden to feed in was very special. In most winters Brambling is a common visitor in Dutch forests, but i still have a soft spot for them.

2- Where in Holland do you visit to go digiscoping and could you describe these places and the main species of birds that can be found there?

I’m a opportunistic digiscoper; being a birder first and a photographer second means that most of my digiscoping is low quality by the standard achieved by “real” digiscopers.