ASHLEY SAUNDERS – DIRECTOR & TOUR LEADER
Ashley has been watching birds since a very young age and has lived in North Norfolk all his life. At 38 he has twenty years experience in the business having spent seven years running his own company before helping to form Oriole Birding. Ashley has vast experience in tour leading in the UK and abroad, and there is no-one more skilled and enthusiastic to lead your birding holiday. Ashley leads many of our Norfolk tours, plus the majority of our UK based holidays as well as several trips overseas. Conservation and bird ringing are his other passions when not tour leading, and he has also written occasionally for the UK birding magazines, not to mention TV and radio appearances! Ashley has birded in France, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Greece, Mallorca, South Africa, Costa Rica, Florida, Israel, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Sri Lanka, Panama, The Gambia, Holland, Romania, Morocco, Cuba, Honduras and Trinidad. Finding rare birds is Ashley’s great passion, developed through a lifetime of birding remote east coast locations during the spring and autumn migration. This has resulted in the discovery of such gems as Pine Bunting, Little Bittern, Cackling Goose, Blyth’s Reed Warbler, Red-flanked Bluetail, Gull-billed Tern, Siberian Stonechat, Pallid Swift, Swainson’s Thrush and Semipalmated Sandpiper. Ashley joined the Norfolk Rarities Committee in July 2017 for a five year term, an accolade which arrives as a result of many years of high quality rarity submissions at both county and national level. Being a 50% shareholder in the company, Ashley oversees company strategy alongside Nick, helps manage our tour logistics and itineraries, and runs our website and marketing. Ashley lives in the Norfolk market town of Fakenham with his wife Lucy and 9 year-old daughter Lily and enjoys supporting Norwich City in his spare time.
NICK PARSONS – DIRECTOR & TOUR LEADER
Nick has been a Director and shareholder of Oriole since 2017. Nick and his family live in Norfolk and their Great Ryburgh Home is also the office for Oriole. A solicitor in private practice for many years Nick works with Ashley on our business strategy and general management as well as tour leading. Nick is a firm believer in putting something back when it comes to nature and he has been a trustee of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust for many years and is currently Chair of Trustees. Locally, he is an active member of the Ryburgh Wildlife Group. When work and family commitments allow Nick is usually to be found out in the field looking for his own birds. He is a seasoned birder overseas China, USA, Colombia, Morocco,South Africa, Spain, Mallorca, Canary Islands, Cyprus, Lesvos and Israel. His other interests are cricket, football, history and archaeology.
JANE O’LEARY – DIRECTOR & TOUR OPERATIONS MANAGER
Jane joined our team in 2018 and when you ring the office with an enquiry or to make a booking, she is the person you are mostly likely to speak with. Jane took on the role of company administrator in September of 2018, having moved to Norfolk with Nick and their daughter that summer. Jane’s background is in public sector insurance, risk management and civil claims, so her move to Oriole Birding was certainly a change of direction and pace! As well as fulfilling her role as the administrator, ensuring your bookings are properly processed and the tours well organised, Jane is a director of Oriole and provides expertise in company governance, finance and all things risk related!
GARY ELTON – TOUR LEADER
A keen birder from the tender age of nine, Gary spent the majority of his early years birding near his childhood home, in and around North West London. Local patches in later years included Wormwood Scrubs and Hilfield Park reservoir, where at this latter site he also served as site warden for 12 years on behalf of the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust. Gary also served as a Herts Bird Club committee member and has contributed to several birding publications and made several television appearances. Living now in Norfolk, and playing an active part in birding there, working part time at Holme Bird Observatory. He is a qualified ringer involved in running a local constant effort ringing site for the British Trust for Ornithology. Tour leading has become a major part of his working life though, and recent destinations include Israel, Northern Greece, Lesbos, Iceland, Spain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Borneo, Sri Lanka and The Gambia (over 15 visits), with other visits to Morocco, Switzerland, Northern India, Goa and North and Central America. His other work also revolves around birds, primarily working off shore, gathering data on seabirds and cetaceans in and around the countries Wind-farms and in recent years he has worked for the Norwegian government, partaking in their annual inventory of wildlife in and around the Norwegian and Barents Sea. Gary joins our team this year to guide a selection of our UK holidays, plus overseas tours to The Gambia & Israel.
NEIL GLENN – TOUR LEADER
Neil’s birdwatching has taken him to six continents over the last forty years. If pushed, he would say Central and South America are his favourite destinations – “you can never see too many hummingbirds!” – but he is happy anywhere in the world if watching birds.
Neil has written two county site guides for Buckingham Press (Best Birdwatching Sites in Norfolk and …in Yorkshire) and his articles have featured in many magazines over the years (BBC Wildlife, Bird Watching Magazine, Birds Illustrated, Wild Travel, etc). Neil is a proud Patron of Birding For All, a charity promoting easy access for everyone on bird reserves and is also Chair of Nottinghamshire Birdwatchers.
When not birdwatching ‘in the field’, Neil can usually be found standing next to a field of a different kind: a football field! His other obsession is non-league football and will often combine visiting a new football ground with some local birdwatching somewhere in the country on any given Saturday.
MARCUS NASH – TOUR LEADER
Marcus grew up in Norfolk and started birding there at the age of 8. He went on to study Zoology at Durham University, where he managed to spend a summer studying Little Egrets in the Camargue and two months in the Peruvian Amazon studying the effects of the then emerging ecotourism on rainforest species distribution. After 14 years living in London and working in the financial services industry, he saw the error of his ways and returned to Norfolk, where he initially spent as much time birding as possible in between taking time out to look after his family, volunteering for the RSPB farmland surveys team, serving on the Norfolk rarities committee, contributing to the Norfolk Bird & Mammal Report and writing other articles, and much more besides. In 2014, he acquired The Bird ID Company and now works as an independent wildlife guide. He has travelled extensively – throughout Europe, to India, Nepal, down through SE Asia to Australia, to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Chile, Costa Rica and the USA. And he has still managed to find a few rarities here including the UK’s second Citril Finch, Black-and-White Warbler, Eastern Yellow Wagtail, Red-flanked Bluetail, Siberian/Stejneger’s Stonechat, Spotted Sandpiper & several White-rumped Sandpipers, Rustic Bunting & several Little Buntings, Dusky, Radde’s, Pallas’s & a couple of Subalpine Warblers, Short-toed Lark, Parrot Crossbill, European Bee-eater, Pallid Harrier, Black-headed Wagtail and several Citrine Wagtails, Gull-billed Tern, Common Rosefinch, Olive-backed Pipit, Northern (‘trumpeting’) Bullfinch and Ring-necked Duck. As well as butterflies, dragonflies and orchids, he also has a growing interest in moths and is hoping to revive his historic entomological training in other directions too. And he is trying to become a better wildlife photographer – if he has any spare time!
DR ROBERT FLOOD – TOUR LEADER
Bob is a Doctor of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy. He has been an active and enthusiastic birder since the age of twelve when his parents, recognizing a zeal for birdlife, bought his first pair of binoculars. Subsequently, Bob has pursued his avian passion from the tropics to Antarctica, across all continents and in very many countries. More recently, Bob has semi-retired and focused his energies on his two core ornithological interests, birds of the Isles of Scilly and seabirds across the world. Bob has become well known in the UK for pioneering pelagic trips off the Isles of Scilly and for the many extremely rare birds he has found in the Isles of Scilly. Bob’s name hit the international press in 2003 when he and friend Bryan Thomas became the first people to positively identify and locate a population of the thought to be extinct New Zealand Storm-petrel in New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf. Bob leads our Scilly pelagic tours as well as Madeira.
JOHN McLOUGHLIN – TOUR LEADER
‘Johnny Mac’ is a popular and highly respected birder and was a tour manager with Bird Holidays Worldwide based in Leeds. He was involved in designing and leading birdwatching tours to many destinations including Armenia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Thailand, Turkey, Romania, Latvia, Morocco, Mongolia, Mexico, Oman, Panama, Poland, Peru and Spain. .until the pandemic struck.
He also worked for In Focus (binocular and telescope specialists) in West Yorkshire and was a regular exhibitor at the Rutland Bird Fair over the years. The voice of Birdline North East Johnny has had his finger on the pulse of rare and migrant birds across the region for many years. He was elected to and served on the British Birds Rarities Committee 1996-2006.
Now based at Flamborough Head in East Yorkshire he enjoys days spent watching and counting seabirds and is ideally placed to lead and assist with our tours in North East England.
NICK ACHESON – TOUR LEADER
Nick Acheson lives where he grew up, in North Norfolk. Following his two degrees, he lived for ten years in South America, working with conservation NGOs including WWF. He has also spent four years in Asia and has worked with wildlife on every continent and ocean. Nick is an ambassador for Norfolk Wildlife Trust, a trustee of Pensthorpe Conservation Trust and a patron of Felbeck Trust. For his book The Meaning of Geese, he cycled 1,200 miles on his mother’s 40-year-old bicycle, following the lives of the wild geese which visit Norfolk each winter. From his flint cottage by a village duckpond he gazes at the sky, watches the birds that pass, swims in rivers and the sea, and walks far and wide across the countryside. We’re delighted to welcome Nick onto the team to lead our our spring birding tour in his native Norfolk in 2024 and keep an eye out for a new general natural history tour in 2025!
STEVE CALE – TOUR LEADER
Originally from Wolverhampton, Steve is now based in Norfolk and leads our holidays to Bulgaria and Ethiopia plus occasional Norfolk tours and second leader roles.
He is an extremely talented bird artist and gives demonstrations of his skills when guiding. His work has been exhibited worldwide and his Golden Oriole image was our first company logo. Steve was heavily involved in the creation of a small nature reserve in Great Ryburgh, base for our Norfolk tours, and along with Nick is a committee member of the Ryburgh Wildlife Group that manages it. He has a tireless enthusiasm for birds and his outgoing and friendly manner have proved very popular on previous tours. Steve has one daughter.
DAVE GOSNEY – TOUR LEADER
Dave is known to many British birdwatchers as the face and voice on most of the products made by Bird Guides including the DVD Video Guide to British Birds, the DVD-ROM Guide to All the Birds of Europe and all the videos in the Birding in… series. Prior to cofounding Bird Guides he travelled widely throughout Europe, guiding tours and researching his ever-popular series of books ‘Finding Birds in…’ which have, for many years, been invaluable aids to travelling birders wanting to find the rarest species throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. With Bird Guides he has continued to travel on many filming trips in Asia and North America but mostly in the Western Palearctic, to generate many of the film clips you can see on the definitive BWPi (BWP on DVD-ROM). His interest in identifying birds by songs and calls led to him writing and recording the commentaries for the new iDentify guides, helping birdwatchers to learn bird songs via their MP3 players. Dave leads our tour to Morocco and we are very pleased to be working with him on these excellent trips.
SIMON GINNAW – TOUR LEADER
Simon has been passionate about birds & natural history for as long as he remembers – his mum tells him that he only ever got excited about bird books as early as 2 years old. Simon has over 13 years of guiding and tour leading experience after starting in his late teens, and his experience has led him to Asia, the Americas, and widely across Europe from Svalbard to the Mediterranean islands, spending much of his time in Fenno-Scandinavia, Poland, and Eastern Europe.
Simon is trained in Forestry & Conservation to Masters level, and this has led him to work with organisations such as the RSPB, as a Park Ranger, and for the Forestry Commission. Bats, butterflies, dragonflies, reptiles, amphibians, cetaceans, and mammal tracking are all in Simon’s skill-set, which can add further dimensions to your birding trips. Simon lives in Kent, where he leads his own evening classes on bird identification and behaviour, and spends much of his spare time with his wife and son, whilst fitting in long-term volunteer work from local wildlife charities where he can.
ANDREW KINGHORN – TOUR LEADER
Andrew is based in county Durham and started birding in his early teens. He attended the University of Sunderland where he studied computing, though upon graduation he went straight into a role as an ornithological consultant in the private sector. Andrew is the owner of Birdwatch North East and has worked freelance as both an ornithological consultant and bird tour guide since 2018. Andrew has undertaken tours across Europe, most notably Finland, Extremadura, and Cyprus. He has also ‘birded’ Morocco, Bulgaria, Israel, Poland, Lesbos, Fuerteventura, Majorca, and most Britain. Andrew is chair of both the Durham Bird Club and its rarities sub-committee, he also liaises with the rare breeding birds panel (RBBP) as part of this role. In Andrew’s spare time he enjoys birding around Durham and Northumberland and has a particular fondness for wetlands. Andrew has found a few rarities in Britain including Iberian Chiffchaff, Red-throated Pipit, Pallid Harrier, White-billed Diver, White-rumped Sandpiper, European Bee-Eater, and Arctic Warbler.
HOWARD VAUGHAN – TOUR LEADER
Howard has been a naturalist for what seems like all of his fifty years and birding has always been at the forefront of his diverse interests. With that has come a desire to know, learn and share the wild world that he sees around himself. He started in conservation in 2000 for the BTO and subsequently spent most of the last twenty years at RSPB Rainham Marshes involved in the visitor experience whilst also acting as Essex County Bird Recorder and Report Editor for nearly ten years. He has birded across Europe and North Africa and now has a taste for the Neo-tropics after two visits to Costa Rica. After guiding tours for other companies plus arranging his own trips for many years, Howard is now freelance and we’re pleased he will be working with Oriole from 2023 and taking our Somerset Levels tours and trips to the New Forest.
CHRIS MILLS – TOUR LEADER
Chris has been guiding professionally since 2009 in Norfolk, Scotland Spain and India. He grew up in Nottinghamshire and was birding from a tender age and can remember his first Yellowhammers and Stonechats when we was 9 years of age, initially visiting a local reservoir and wooded area, Chris eventually moved on in his early teens to birding at Attenborough NR where a few years later he set up and ran the Attenborough Bird Club for ten years, during these years at Attenborough he learnt to ring birds and undertook the Nestbox recording scheme.
Chris was soon involved with the Notts Birdwatchers, sitting on the Committee for a number of years before becoming the County Recorder for Nottinghamshire, he eventually left Nottinghamshire and moved to Norfolk in 2002.
Chris has been birding & photographing wildlife for 30 years and for the last 21 years in Norfolk. Birding has taken him to many wonderful places around the world, visiting Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, France, Spain (many times), Canary Islands, Turkey, Corsica, Israel (12 times!), Oman, UAE, Gambia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Goa, India (14 times), Nepal, Thailand, California, Texas, New Jersey, Brazil, Peru, South Georgia, Ascension Islands, Tristan de Cunha & Cape Verde Islands. Chris is a natural guide with great experience, knowledge & enthusiasm and has also undertaken paid and voluntary work for Norfolk Wildlife Trust, RSPB, Game Conservancy Trust & The Farming Conservation Group. He also undertakes some Bird Survey work, mainly for onshore wind turbine projects but more recently he’s been also covering Kittiwake population and productivity surveys. He will be leading our India tours from 2023 onwards.
PHIL PALMER – TOUR LEADER
At the end of his Natural England radio-tracking research project to help Nightjars in the UK, and the publication of his book “First for Britain”, Phil began a 23-year career as one of the few full time UK professional wildlife tour leaders. Leading over 140 tours that took him to every continent, Phil was a very popular tour manager/leader with Bird Holidays until the pandemic struck. Phil self-funded his place on various expeditions including three to the Chukotka breeding grounds of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper before and after they were declared critically endangered. Since then, he worked with the Spoon-billed Sandpiper task force to help stop hunting in their Myanmar wintering grounds. During his travels, he has made several discoveries including new species records for Uganda, Bhutan, Russia, Chile, South Africa and the Palearctic, and previously unrecorded aspects of bird behaviour.
He has enjoyed seeing his articles and photos in various books, journals, and magazines but, his proudest moment was helping to save the Idle Valley for wildlife. Following years of negotiating with gravel companies, his childhood local patch is now a landscape-scale nature reserve owned by Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust where he was Chairman of their reserves committee.
JONATHAN FAROOQI – TOUR LEADER
Jonathan started birding when he was seven years old and joined his dad on days out birdwatching in his home county of Northumberland. His interest grew rapidly, and he enjoyed spending as much time as possible birding his patch of Druridge Bay, or Lindisfarne if the winds were right. He particularly enjoys trying to find rare birds, and his finds in Britain include Buff-bellied Pipit, Red-breasted Goose, Thrush Nightingale, Broad-billed Sandpiper, Pacific Golden Plover, Pallid Harrier, Caspian Tern and White-spotted Bluethroat. Jonathan is also interested in bird photography and has had photos published in a number of books, magazines and other publications. He has spent time birding across much of Britain as well as overseas in locations including Cyprus, Mallorca, the Canary Islands, Iceland, and Catalonia.
Between 2019 and 2022, Jonathan studied for a BSc in Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, falling in love with Norfolk at the same time. He moved to Norfolk permanently in 2023, settling on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. During his studies, Jonathan worked on the bird news team at BirdGuides and he now works as an Ornithologist for HiDef Aerial Surveying Ltd. He is a member of the Northumberland Rarities Committee and enjoys volunteering with the RSPB to do conservation work and surveying. His other interests include cricket, football and meteorology. We are delighted to welcome Jonathan on board and he will be shadowing on some of our tours during 2024 to gain experience and to get to know some of you in preparation for his first tours with us in 2025.
DAVID WALSH – TOUR LEADER
David has been a keen birdwatcher since his primary school days and still has his notebooks to prove it! Whilst teaching in Essex and then Suffolk he ran bird clubs at his schools and is very proud of the fact that several of the boys who he inspired as 11-year-olds are now working in full-time conservation; he continues to encourage young birdwatchers whenever possible. David retired from full-time teaching in 2015 but continues to do part-time maths tutoring. In his spare time he enjoys singing in a local choir and supporting Ipswich Town!
David has lived in Suffolk since 1992; he puts his love of bird songs and calls to good use, running surveys to monitor breeding birds in the spring and searching out migrant passerines in the autumn. He co-ordinates the submission of Suffolk’s records to the national Rare Breeding Birds Panel. Earlier this year he was awarded the Denis Ockelton Trophy in recognition of his work in various spheres within the county.
David has guided over 90 overseas tours since his first to La Brenne in 1986. In the last 10 years he has enjoyed developing his interest in butterflies and dragonflies as well as birds. David’s boundless energy and enthusiasm, coupled with a determination to ensure that everyone in the group sees the birds, has understandably made him very popular with the clients.
David has extensive experience of birding in Asia. In 2008 he used a sabbatical to spend three months in Southeast Asia, which included a successful quest to find the endangered White-eared Night Heron in Vietnam. He has travelled widely in the Himalayan foothills with trips to Ladakh, Nepal, China and most recently Bhutan. He was a member of the Oriole Birding group which had a wonderful tour to that very special country earlier this year and is thoroughly looking forward to leading the 2025 trip alongside Mincha Wangdi.
