A decade of nature conservation and birding in the Manx nation, 2014-2025.
We moved to The Isle of Man still hot and dusty from our residency in Qatar. It felt a bit like ‘jumping out of the frying pan’ and into a wet fridge! But the Island and its community of natives and ‘come-overs’ made us welcome from the off. The many gestures of friendship and warm introductions to people and societies is something we’ll always treasure.
If you were to tell any birder that you were moving to a rock in the Irish Sea, somewhere between Cumbria and Belfast, then few would imagine a gold-standard birding experience. Indeed, the Island’s location does not serve up a constant diet of scarcities and rarities. Even the Calf of Man Bird Observatory struggles to keep up with nearby peers such as Bardsey and Skomer.
Yet the Island does have plenty to offer the keen birder, year-round. An impressive range of coastal, lowland and upland habitats can easily be covered in a day. Moreover, coverage of key sites has historically been nothing like as intense as that of premier UK birding sites – which, along with a low population density and even lower birder density, lends a strong sense of the opportunity to head out and find one’s own goodies.
I was privileged to act as a Trustee of the Manx Wildlife Trust and then to lead the nature conservation charity Manx BirdLife for much of my time on the Island. Our establishment of the Manx BirdLife Point of Ayre National Reserve in the north and the Manx BirdLife Langness Nature Reserve in the south provided the most wonderful opportunity to share the joy of nature with the Island’s community and to protect some of the Island’s valuable natural heritage for generations to come.
Isle of Man galleries
Taxonomic order and nomenclature are taken from Collins Bird Guide (Third Edition. Lars Svensson, Killian Mullarney, Dan Zetterstrom and Hans Larsson. Published by Christopher Helm 2022).
