Like most of the best ideas, it started in the pub. Appropriately enough, the hostelry in question was The Finch’s Arms at Hambleton, but Tim Appleton and Martin Davies can scarcely have imagined that their embryonic plans would eventually hatch into the fully-fledged, soarway success that the Birdfair is today.
The Rutland Water reserve had, in 1987, already hosted a local event billed as ‘The Wildfowl Bonanza’, and its success encouraged Tim and Martin to widen their horizons, with the first actual British Birdwatching Fair (to give it its full title) taking place in 1989.
While getting birdwatchers together to celebrate their love of the pastime and developing a trade fair was the easy bit, there was a crucial third factor that quickly spread the event’s fame beyond the UK – its support of international conservation.
Right from the start, all profits have been targeted towards projects run by BirdLife International and its partners.
The first good cause, back in 1989, was the Stop The Massacre campaign, tackling the hunting of birds in Malta. It raised a creditable £3,000, but things quickly snowballed, with £10,000 raised the following year towards saving Spain’s Doñana National Park, right up to the £265,000 raised in 2008 for the Preventing Extinctions Programme.
More than 20,000 visitors now attend annually, plus over 300 exhibitors. It has taken on more and more of an international flavour, but one of the attractions is the sheer variety of what’s on offer, with national tourist boards side-by-side with small county bird groups, or major optics firms sitting next to artists and craft stalls. It’s this that has seen the event dubbed as the birdwatching’s Glastonbury.
Vital to it all is the fact that staff and volunteers from the Rutland Water reserve, joined by others from the Wildlife Trust and the RSPB, spend weeks preparing the site and helping the event run smoothly, ensuring that all the money raised can be targeted towards conservation of birds.
Organiser Tim Appleton said: “The amazing success of Birdfair can be claimed by a whole host of people involved in creating and managing it, but the real unsung heroes are our Birdfair volunteers. For weeks leading up to the fair and weeks after they are toiling away behind the scenes with an array of thankless jobs. So while you are enjoying the fair, spare a thought for our volunteers who indirectly have raised tens of thousands of pounds for international conservation projects by providing free labour!”
For more information on the Birdfair's origins visit www.birdfair.org.uk
Tim and Martin at the start of it all
Teaching children about conservation has always been an important part of the Birdfair...
...though there's always time for some fun and games.
