Editorial & Records Committee Biographies

Barry Wright is 40 years old and first started bird-watching at the age of 11 when he was more interested in looking out the window for birds at school instead of studying!!

He gradually got more and more hooked on seeing birds and began travelling further a field. His job was fortuitously located at Joyce Green Hospital, Dartford and enabled him to go bird-watching each lunchtime at work. He has travelled to many parts of the World and feels most at home in the rainforest, often in the company of the mozzies and leeches!! He is particularly interested in seeing the rarer species in the World whilst back at home he concentrates on birding the North Kent marshes although he has spent long spells at Reculver, Swalecliffe, Dungeness and Bockhill in the past.

Don Taylor has been a birding enthusiast for over fifty years and finds it rewarding to encourage others to enjoy all that birding has to offer. As a newcomer to Kent in 1964, he soon became involved with the KOS, supporting the important role the society plays in collecting bird records. Since then, he has served on the Editorial Committee in various capacities, including ten years as Editor of the Kent Bird Report. His passion for local patch studies is well known.

Geoff Burton grew up on the South London borders of Kent before permanently moving to Kent in 1974. His first bird-watching expedition was to the North Kent Marshes when he was 12 and he’s been birding ever since. He has always established a local patch for himself; initially it was the High Elms Estate near Downe, then Bough Beech Reservoir and now Swalecliffe. He has bird watched widely in Europe and more recently spread his wings further afield to North and South America and Asia. He has been a member of the KOS Editorial and Records Committee for more than half his life serving as Recorder for West Kent and more recently Sheppey/Swale as well as a stint on the Rarities Panel. Ambition? To do a bit more birding ..

 
Ian Roberts is 32 and has been an active birder since he was 13. He lives in Hythe and does most of his birding in the Folkestone and Hythe area, where he has seen over 250 species. However he has also travelled widely in Europe and Africa, and spent four years living in Aberdeen, when he regularly visited the Shetland and Orkney Isles. He also has an interest in moths, and runs a website covering the birds and moths of the Folkestone and Hythe area, which can be accessed via the KOS website (latest sightings).
Martin Coath started birding in 1952 and settled with his family in Kent in 1978. Soon after early retirement he joined this committee in 1997 as Recorder for South Kent. His local patch is Sevenoaks WR, but he is a regular at Bough Beech. He is also a member of that august group known as the Saganauts who rampage widely round the county and occasionally beyond. He has also birded widely in Europe and more recently in Latin America.
John Tilbrook lives in South East London and has been interested in birds since he was a boy .His local patch is within walking distance of his house, but unfortunately not in Kent. Nevertheless he has always regarded Kent as his home county and, since retiring, has spent even more time in the county building up his Kent list. He also twitches within reason throughout the Britsh Isles, and has travelled widely in the Americas, Africa and Asia, as well as the Palearctic.
Jack Chantler has been birding for about 35years in Kent, initially at Dungeness and thence, during the late 70's and 80's, around the country chasing rareties. From 1994 he found the joys of birding at Bockhill where he can now be found most days especially during  migration time.
Likes ...... Warblers and THFC.
Dislikes........Egrets, Arsenal and celery.
Ambition.......... to see a Roller at Bockhill.

Alan Fossey is a Kent native, currently living in the Medway towns. Wild birds have been an ever-present mainstay in his life since the early seventies and he has travelled throughout Britain, mainland Europe, North Africa and America to experience them.  Through necessity, birds have sometimes taken a back seat to study, family and work commitments but any life balance is always ultimately skewed yet again in favour of ornithological matters, be it watching, counting, ringing or simply reading about them, often to the frustration of all around him!
Robin Mace has come to birding later in life after many years concentrating on singing (finally giving up when his top notes deserted him). His home in Ashford is convenient for all the major birding sites in Kent and he also birds in the UK and Europe. Robin works as an IT consultant and provides technical support on the website, the records database and KBR production. He has recently been involved in the project to put all the past KBRs on to CD.

Chris Hindle was interested in Natural History from a very early age and started birding regularly at Reculver in 1963. He qualified as a ringer with the B.T.O. in 1972 and has ringed over 30,000 birds at various sites in the Reculver area.

Chris has birded in over forty countries, visiting places as far a field as the Arctic and Australia. He has a particular interest in North American birds and has seen over 560 species in the A.B.A. area.
Richard Bonser is 26 years old and has been bird-watching for over 20 years - basically since he can remember! He lives in south-east London and calls Kent his birding home these days, after cutting his teeth birding on the Cheshire marshes. He spread his wings further a field in his early teens and since then has traveled throughout the British Isles in search of birds. He has also traveled extensively abroad having visited all continents (bar the poles!), but now concentrates his efforts in the Western Palearctic and also has a particular interest in birding in The Middle East.