birding...

Born in Brighton, UK, in 1949, Richard Crombet-Beolens - known to all as Bo Beolens, the Fat Birder just about remembers post war rationing… I used to toddle off to the corner shop with my coupons to buy sweeties. This penchant for all things tasty probably stems from the shortages of the Fifties. That alone is not entirely responsible for my undoubted corpulence. I am by misfortune disabled, (a form of arthritis called Ankylosing Spondylitis which makes walking painful and sometimes impossible) and by disposition indolent. The combination of these two factors with my propensity to consume copious quantities of curry, Belgian Buns and (since giving up smoking in 1998) boiled sweets, (that's a sort of Hard Candy for U.S. fatbirder surfers) has conspired to add more poundage. So the portrait above is, flattering. The curvature of my back is an accident of fate, the curvature of my front a self inflicted injury.

I grew up in Kent [the South East corner of England] and was introduced to birding by my father. [He was still a keen antipodean - retiring to New Zealand] Sadly dad died May 2008 two years after mum.

An accident-prone boy I dislocated my left hip at the age of nine and then the right hip falling out of my wheelchair in hospital. Needing a passive outdoor pursuit my father took me fishing and, when a kingfisher used my fishing rod as a perch, I was completely hooked (sorry) by birding. The pursuit of girls, and career, and the delights of British beer enticed me away for a while but I returned to the pastime just too late for the famous Tesco warbler [an American golden-winged warbler that was found in a supermarket carpark in my home county].

I have lived in Scotland, Lancashire, Buckinghamshire and London pursuing a career as the director of various charities before moving back to the county of my youth in 1995. In August 1999 I moved to Margate [try to go any further south east and you develop a French accent] and have been discovering the joys of working a small coastal patch since then.

I rarely twitch now but still love to travel the world whenever finance allows… apart from various European jaunts I have birded (under my own direction and usually just with the company of my wife Maggie - she loves birding in exotic places but hates all creepy-crawlies) in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, USA, India {Goa}, Gambia, Trinidad & Tobago, Kenya, France, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Montenegro, etc. I regret that I also visited several other countries when young and foolish without my binoculars! This way I missed lots of birding in places like Tunisia, Morocco, Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, Russia, and Ukraine etc. Although I did once take a trip on a tour bus in Tunisia and remember the guide pointing out a huge flock of, as he put it, Pink Floyd`s in a saltpan. More recently I have birded with others [usually members of the disabled birders association - dba] in Kenya, Canada, Northern India, Mexico, Texas, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Poland & Hungary, Sri Lanka etc..

Between us Maggie and I have 4 children (2 boys and 2 girls) in age order they are Matthew, Julia, Suki and Ashley, all grown and married. My son (Ash) is the only birder and is a keen twitcher who has already overtaken me with his UK life list. He posts his increasingly good photographs of birds on a number of websites including this one. A fourth generation birder made an appearance in January 2000; Owen started birding as soon as he could hold his binoculars steady… [when he started, on a walk with his dad he pointed in the direction of a bird which his father told him was a pigeon - no he shouted pointing again - his father had missed a kingfisher picked up by his son! So another generation of birding Beolens' find themselves gripped off by the new generation.] His younger brother Toby has yet to indulge and my beautiful namesake, baby 'Bo' is, at 8 months, a tad too young to go on fieldtrips... one day 'though! I am working on Jade [Julia's offspring and my first granddaughter] but, at 17, she is avifauna sensitive - and even reviewed a book for me in these files - but seems to have become much more interested in other things! Maggie's son Matthew has no interest in birds but does try his luck in the Reality Birding League thus proving luck is as important as knowledge, his daughter [Granddaughter number 2], Eve - 8, is already able to recognise a robin when she sees one. My daughter Suki is not a birder despite my best efforts, but she did enjoy the exotic birds, which she saw in Kenya when visiting her father-in-law. He feeds birds from his balcony; wild Black Kites that swoop down in dozens to take scraps of meat thrown into the air. She has recently obtained some better bins to see the birds in her garden so there's hope for her yet!

The Fatbirder website is an attempt to put as many birders in touch with each other throughout the world as possible to encourage friendship and conservation. It is non-commercial but taking up too much of my time, I wish I had a few more advertisers so it would not cost me money to run! I also welcome contributions from anyone anywhere. It is my ambition to have an introduction written to every country [and every state within countries] in the world by a local birder of, from, or a very frequent visitor to, that country.

I also own and operate several other websites. I set up the disabled birders association in 2000 - see http://www.disabledbirdersassociation.co.uk and more recently Anytime Tours offering to put together overseas trips to couples and small groups see http://www.anytimetours.co.uk and I also launched http://www.birderstravel.com last year the first ever 'comparison' website for birding tours and has a growing list of operators and well over 100 tours on offer.

I have a website for my book 'Whose Bird' see: http://www.freewebs.com/whosebird/index.htm I also operate a site which ranks its member birding sites by the amount of traffic they get see: http://www.birdingtop1000.com that has over 1050 members. If you want to keep up with what I'm doing look for my on Facebook or join the Fatbirder Fan Club Facebook site or see my Twitter updates. You can also read past articles on my other site http://www.grumpyoldbirder.com

Writing seems to take up more and more of my time. I have been writing the Grumpy Old Birder column for a few years - sadly Birds Illustrated printed its last edition in Summer 2009 and is now no more - I do not think that my column was the cause of its disappearance. Since Whose Bird was published [about all the people after whom birds have been named] we have worked on similar books on Mammals, [due to hit the bookstalls October 2009] Reptiles, [we have finished the first draft and are about to send it to our publishers] and amphibians currently underway. I have also been asked to put together a book on 'Accessible Birding' and Maggie and I are busily researching it... at long last a project calling for more birding not less!.

On 1st Feb 2010 my World Life list stood at 2511, my UK list at 367 and County (Kent) list 274.