birdgirl: world birder

Showing posts with label world birder. Show all posts

Saturday, 25 May 2019

Best Birding Apps 2019 - BirdWatchingBuzz

One of the things I like to keep up to date with is other bird-related websites and blogs.

On the USA BirdWatchingBuzz website, there is a really comprehensive review of Apps for birding in the USA where they seem to be miles ahead https://birdwatchingbuzz.com/birding-apps/

Mya-Rose Craig AKA Birdgirl with her Leica Bins
Copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

As I do a lot of world birding, sometimes it's hard to know what the best Apps are that are available and good to use abroad.

I really liked the review for Larkwire, which helps you learn bird calls, as it can be overwhelming learning lots of bird song and calls in a new country. The review gives all the information you need about this and 4 other Apps.

Mya-Rose Craig AKA Birdgirl with Author Jonathan Franzen
Copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

About the Author

Young environmentalist and birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 17-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes posts about birding, conservation and environmental issues from around the world.

She has been involved in the UK organisation of the Youth Strikes encouraging young people from around the world to not go to school once a month and protest instead demanding immediate action to prevent climate breakdown. This is an interview in New Statesman.

She was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer-songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people.

She organised four nature is helping to run four more in 2019. She also organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans two more in 2019. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Visible Minority Ethnic people and is President. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change.

She has given over 50 talks, speaking at conferences such as being on a panel with George Monbiot and Caroline Lucas on Sustainability and the Future of Cities. She is a Minister in Chris Packham's Manifesto for Nature in 2018 and spoke in front of 10,000 people at the Walk for Nature. She has also appeared on TV and radio and is particularly proud of being in Silent Roars, a short film which was part of Listen to Britain 2017 https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-silent-roars-2017-online.

She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. She was also listed as one of Bristol's BME top 100 powerlist.

She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent. She became the youngest person to see 5000 birds in 2019 age 16 and is looking forward to visiting Brazil birding in 2019 and hopes to see half the birds in the world there. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter. If you would like to contact Mya-Rose about her work, please e-mail helenabcraig@hotmail.co.uk.

Become an expert packer for birding trips

This is an article that I contributed to for the Mighty Goods website in the USA with 4 birders writing about how we prepare and pack for birding trips

One of them is Bill Thompson III who has sadly since died. The other two contributers are Jeff Reiter and Eva Matthews Lark.

This is one of the quesions I answered for my contributions:

What top 3 things do you bring besides the common stuff all bird watchers bring?

Can you guess what I included from one of these photos?

Mya-Rose Craig AKA Birdgirl with Author Jonathan Franzen
Copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig AKA Birdgirl with Author Jonathan Franzen magazine cover
Copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig AKA Birdgirl with her Leica binoculars
Copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig AKA Birdgirl
Copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

About the Author

Young environmentalist and birder Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig

She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. She was also listed as one of Bristol's BME top 100 powerlist.

Monday, 24 July 2017

Indonesia Trip 2017 days 1 & 2 - 22 to 23 July 2017

Indonesia Trip Day 1 & 2

Saturday 22 July 2017 to Sunday 23 July 2017

My new binoculars and telescope arrived, on loan from Leica, just in time for our trip which was amazing.

Photography copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

I finished school early at 12.15 pm on Friday 31st July 2017 and went to Chew Valley Lake picnic site to have fish and chips (or just chips for me) at Salt and Malt with my mates. We then walked to a friends' house in Bishop Sutton before Mum picked us up and took us to do the car parking for Miles Leonard's Fifty Fest. Miles is the Chief Exec of Parlaphone Records and Warner Bros Records and owns our local pub, The Ring O' Bells. I did it with a group of friends as a favour as I still hadn't packed. It was 11pm before I got home, when I chucked my laptop, IPad, Kindle and phone into a bag with chargers and one novel, The Handmaiden's Tale which I'd borrowed from school and 2 revision guides, one for Biology and one for Latin. Lets just hope Mum has packed enough clothes for me! I've decided to go make-up and product free for our entire 6 week trip.

Ayesha arrived at Midnight, just as I was heading to bed. We were up again at 3 am, so that Ayesha could drive us to Bristol for our 4.30 am coach to London.

After checking in, breakfast and boarding our flight, we were almost in the Indonesia zone. After watching two films, I was flat out lying over two seats thanks to my Mum. Our plane sat on the runway for an hour and a half at Heathrow, making it unlikely that we would make our connecting flight at Kuala Lumpa (KL).

Birdigrl Mya-Rose Craig at Heathrow airport
Photography copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

When we arrived in KL, we had an hour until our next flight, so there wasn't much chance of getting onto that, and no chance of out bags getting on, we thought. But we were in luck, as we got off flight, our next flight was literally boarding at the gate next door and a lovely man told us that our bags were already on board.

It was a 3-4 hour flight from KL to Denpasar, Bali in Indonesia. Then we had a day of waiting for our next flight. The seats in the airport were uncomfortable, so Mum and I slept on the floor, with no shame, whilst we waited.

Birdigrl Mya-Rose Craig
Photography copyright Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mum went to buy water, but would only let me buy one bottle between all of us which she thought had cost £5.00. I told her that surely she had the decimal place in the wrong place because i doubted that Pringles could cost £16.00. But no, Mum is always right. Back talking to Dad, it turned out that the bottle had cost 50p not £5.00, but there was no time now to get any more drinks.

Our next flight was to Makassar, Sulawesi on the southern tip of the Island.

We were met by a local guide and driver at 7.00 pm and taken to our rather plush hotel which was next to the airport. After dumping our bags, we headed for dinner. Mike Nelson our Bird Tour Asia Guide came to greet us and catch up.

Bird Tour Asia are the top bird tour company in Asia and have the most amazing owner guides, Rob Hutchinson and James Eaton. In 2014 we had birded Sabah in Borneo and a bit of Malaysia. Rob had been touring Borneo a week ahead of us and had been really generous with his up to date birding gen.

Myself and Mum had met Mike in Frasers' Hill briefly during that trip. Dad had been in West Papua and so Mum and I had gone to Frasers' Hill on the Malaysian Peninsular. We bumped into Mike with Richard Schofield and his partner Di. We had met Richard in Colombia (a well known Tour Leader with Birdquest before retiring). It was funny because Di had immediately recognised me from the BBC4 programme "Twitchers: A Very British Obsession". We had been having a nightmare with a hopeless local guide and so Mike gave us some birding gen and tips.

Mike said that when he had agreed to guide us for the whole summer back in Jan 2015, he had remembered meeting me and Mum the previous summer.

There were 3 people joining us for the first part of our trip, which was Sulawesi and Halmahera. They were Nick and Claire and Tony. We had met them on the Isles of Scilly and also Dad had met them at the Amur Falcon twitch in Cornwall last week. Their flight was arriving at 11pm and so they were going to be exhausted when we meet at 4 am tomorrow morning, Monday 24 July 2017, for the start of our birding tour.

About the Author

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig in Antarctica
Photograph copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 15-year-old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent. She is looking forward to visiting Guatamala, Tanzania, Kenya and Madagasca birding in 2018 and hopes to see her 5000th bird species in the world.

Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer-songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. She is an Ambassador for World Shorebirds Day, See It Her Way and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. She has given over 50 talks. She has also appeared a number of times on TV and radio. She organised a conference, Race Equality in Nature, in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature and plans to run her fifth Camp Avalon camp in 2018. She has also set up Black2Nature with the aim of working with organisations to increase the access to nature of Black Asian Minority Ethnic people. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. She has been awarded the Bath and West Show Environmental Youth Award 2017 for Bristol for her Black2Nature work EYA 2017. Please also like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter.

Friday, 5 February 2016

Leopard Seal killing penguin in Antarctica

When I was in Antarctica in December 2016, we witnessed a really rare sight of a Leopard Seal hunting seals, catching one, killing it and then thrashing it from side to side, to skin it. This is my video of the seal skinning the penguin.

http://youtu.be/Urun__AMSKs

Leopard Seal and Adeile Penguin

Leopard Seal

About the Writer

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly

Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent.

Mya-Rose is a Bristol European Green Capital 2015 Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol 2015 Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter

Saturday, 7 November 2015

November Media interest

November was an exciting month for me.

First, it started with this photo of me in Birdwatching Magazine. They had bought the photo of a child and nest box from an agency and I was really pleased that the magazine had chosen one of me...an amusing start.

Birdwatching Magazine - November Edition Page 79

Then a local on-line newspaper, The Western Daily Press, picked up on my Chew Valley Gazette article about seeing my 4000th bird and being the youngest person to see this many. They interviewed me and published a piece online on 1st November 2015 https://t.co/o0MWldq6VS

Then, another local on-line paper, The Western Morning News, published an article online on 2nd November 2015 about my birding and seeing my 4000th bird

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Somerset-girl-13-youngest-bird-spotter-record-4/story-28098718-detail/story.html?00

This was followed by a later on-line article about me in the ITV West Country News also on 2nd November 2015

https://t.co/uR3MFomHR6 https://t.co/XwG5uR80FF

This is the article published in the Metro Nationwide about me on 4th November 2015. It was really exciting as lots of people I know had read the article, not knowing that I was going to be in it (The Metro is a free Newspaper distributed in cities including London and Bristol particularly on public transport).

The Metro

So this is another article in the popular National newspaper, The Daily Express, also published on 4th November 2015.

The Daily Express

So this is another article about my birding, published in the weekly Somerset Guardian, on 5th November 2015 thankfully with more recent photos!

The Somerset Guardian

Finally, this is the article about me in the weekly Midsomer Norton & Radstock Journal on 5th November 2015.

The Midsomer Norton & Radstock Journal

This blog post is about the huge amount of media attention that I had in November, about my seeing my 4000th world bird in the summer. It was a beautiful Red-throated Tit which I saw in Swaro Plains on my first day in Kenya. For me, it's all about the birding and not about the number, but it was still nice to have lots of articles about me. Even it catches the interest of a few people and they start birding, then it will have been worth it.

It was really exciting to find these articles and not knowing that they were being published. Thank you to everyone who sent their congratulations and let me know if you see anything else. Roll on 5000!

About the Writer

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly

Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and is looking forward to watching Penguins in Antarctica in December 2015, which will be her 7th continent.

Saturday, 31 October 2015

Article on Swarovski Optik Blog

An many of you will know from reading my blog, I have a pair of Swarovski Optik CL Companian 10 x 32 binoculars. They are perfect for me because they are so light, but still giving me the performance I need especially for world birding.

This summer, I used a harness strap whilst in East Africa, which worked really well distributing the weight and stopping me from getting binocular neck.

This is an article that was published on the Swarovski Optik blog, about my birding trip to East Africa and seeing my 4000th bird in the world.

http://aa.swarovskioptik.com/nature/blog/The_4000th_bird_of_Birdgirl_Mya_Rose

Please can you post a comment if you like the article.

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig, with binocular harness, Mabamba Wetlands, Uganda
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig, with Swarovski Optik binoculars, Uganda
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

About the Writer

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly

Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and is looking forward to watching Penguins in Antarctica in December 2015, which will be her 7th continent.