My name is Nigel Milbourne and I grew up in the village of Cleeve in north Somerset, where my love of the natural world was fostered by my father and primary school teacher, the wonderful, Mrs Baxter. I moved to the Scottish Borders for four years, before returning to Bristol to study. The first six months of my working life were spent at the Institute for Marine Environmental Research in Plymouth, before I moved back to Bristol to work for Cadbury’s at Keynsham, where I was site Environment Manager when the plant was closed in 2011. At that point I took early retirement.
My wife and I moved to Blagdon in 1990, where I became a member of the Somerset Wildlife Trust, and a voluntary manager/warden of Ubley Warren Nature Reserve on the Mendip Hills. I joined the Mendip Society, Somerset Invertebrates Group, and Somerset Ornithological Society.
My life long interest in birds was rekindled when I became a bird watcher in the early 1990s, and I now lead the Blagdon Lake Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) team and have counted there nearly every month since 1998. I’ve carried out Breeding Bird and other surveys for the British Trust for Ornithology, and am a member of the Avon Ornithological Group that produces the annual Avon Bird Report, for which I currently write the section on ducks. I am a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.
Bristol Water invited me to become a voluntary Bird Warden around 25 years ago, and I spend much of my spare time at Blagdon Lake watching, surveying and just enjoying what this wonderful site has to offer the naturalist. During this time I became a Natural England Voluntary Bat Roost Visitor and hold a Class 2 Bat Survey Licence, joined the Bat Conservation Trust, Avon, Somerset and Wiltshire Bat Groups, and took part in the National Nathusius’ Bat Project. I also became a life member of Yatton and Congresbury Wildlife Action Group (YACWAG).
I took up an invitation to become a member of the Nature Photographic Society for a number of years, having photographed wildlife since the mid-1970s, and this surely honed my skills behind the lens. I’ve been very fortunate to have visited many wonderful parts of the planet from Alaska and the west coast of the USA, to the Amazon jungle and Andes of South America, Europe from Madeira to Iceland, Finland and the Middle East, to India, China and Thailand in Asia. However, no matter where I am in the world, my heart is beside Blagdon Lake. A diary entry made by my late father in 1963 of a day I spent fly fishing with him, means I have been lakeside, on and off, for over sixty years, and apart from when I’ve been away, I’ve visited nearly every day for the last thirty years.