Ed Hunter

Ed grew up in Lancashire, where his local birding patch was Rivington near Horwich – an area rich in habitats including reservoirs, woodlands, moors and Red Moss land. Early highlights such as discovering breeding Long-eared Owls, Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers, a vagrant Spotted Sandpiper and a singing Golden Oriole sparked a lifelong passion for birding.

In 1989, he moved to Cardiff, exploring the Rhymney Great Wharf and the Taff/Ely Estuary before it was flooded to create Cardiff Bay. Since then, he has continued birding across Glamorgan and beyond, with a special interest in the Gower.

In 1996, Ed spent significant time in the Straits of Gibraltar, initially as a resident volunteer with Migres, monitoring raptor and stork migration to Morocco. He later participated in radio tracking Black Storks in Andalucia.

His interest in global birding has led to extensive travels to India, Nepal, Sikkim, Namibia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, Poland, Germany, France, Turkey, Israel, Canada and the USA. Despite these far-flung adventures, he has always returned home to Glamorgan, where local birding has produced several rare Welsh finds. In 2015, Ed discovered the UK’s first breeding pair of Iberian Chiffchaffs, a species typically found in Spain. His documentation of this event earned him the Carl Zeiss Award in 2016, and his interactive paper (with sound and video) was published in British Birds in 2018.

Ed is currently an active committee member of the Gower Ornithological Society. He remains deeply passionate about birds and the natural world, with strong interests in migration, vagrancy, raptors, bird identification and wildlife photography.