Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig – Born to Bird

I’m Birdgirl: I’m seriously into nature, but especially birds. I went on my first twitch when I was nine days old to the Isles of Scilly for a Lesser Kestrel. (Yes Dad, I know I can’t count it). My dad’s a birder and my mum’s a twitcher/OCD world birder. My fourth word was ‘birdie’ whilst pointing at a Black Lark on Anglesey. (Yes mum I know I can’t count it, still too young). Basically, my life revolves around birds (apart from ballet, tap, modern, piano, guitar, choir, drama, Spanish, Guides and Scouts that is!).

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig twitching to the Isles of Scilly for a
Lesser Kestrel at 9 days, May 2002 with Ayesha Ahmed-Mendoza
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig twitching to the Isles of Scilly for a
Lesser Kestrel at 9 days, May 2002 with Ayesha Ahmed-Mendoza
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at 20 months. Mum organised her first
foreign birding trip: she thought the Pyrenees in February was a good idea!
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

I love birding, especially in my garden. I’m into ringing, and twitching is a habit I can’t seem to shake off, but my heart lies with world birding. My obsession started when Mum and Dad took me on my first South American trip, to Ecuador in August 2010.

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on a canopy tower in the
Amazon, Ecuador in August 2010
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig
My local patch is Chew Valley Lake and it’s where I go ringing. I am also lucky enough to live close to the Somerset Levels, which is great for wildlife. I love going to the Isles of Scilly because it is beautiful and a Mecca for birds.

The only time I have ever done a year list was in 2009. The BBC decided to do a program about birders and begged us to be in it. But then they decided to give it a “funny” title (at the expense of the people in it) which was ‘Twitchers: A Very British Obsession’. Here’s a link to the Birdgirl cut, in case you don’t believe me,

Publicity photo of Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig for
Twitchers: A Very British Obsession
I was obviously the cutest of all the stars!

I use BUBO Listing to keep track of all the birds I have seen. Whenever I look at my records I’m reminded of all the fantastic birds I have seen, like my 400th British bird, Booted Warbler, which I saw when I was 9.

This blog is basically for me to tell you a bit about myself, what I’m up to, to say what I think about conservation issues and to moan about what humans are doing to the earth.

It’s really sad about what people are doing to our planet (the only one we have) and as well as being incredibly depressing, is also very stupid. I mean, what happens when we run out of stuff, e.g. Oxygen? Also, tons of birds (yes, I did have to drag them in) are dying out. When I’m older I want to try and help change things.

When I was 4, I spent a month in South Africa on a road trip looking for birds and wildlife. My older sister Ayesha often moaned about having to be in the back of the 4×4 with me, so she and mum organised a rota for who sat next to me (because I was such an angel). The best birds of the trip were Ostrich, African Penguin, Secretarybird, Cape Rockjumper and a Kimberley Pipit (whose only known habitat is a football pitch in the middle of Kimberley!). Some of the animals I was lucky enough to see were lions (I got up close and personal with them), elephants, buffalo, a leopard and white rhinos.

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at Mkuze National Park,
South Africa, July 2006 with Ayesha Ahmed-Mendoza
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Ostrich, South Africa, July 2006
Photograph taken by and copyright Ayesha Ahmed-Mendoza

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig in the Amazon, Ecuador, August 2010
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

In 2012 I went to Ghana, Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. Everywhere we went there were community projects, to save the environment and birds but at the same time giving money back to the communities. One of these places was where we saw the Yellow-headed Picathartes, wow what a bird.

Yellow-headed Picathartes village, Ghana, January 2012
Photograph taken by and copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at the Fuertes’s
Parrot Reserve, Colombia, March 2012
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at Sajama National Park, Bolivia, June 2012
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig birding at Machu Picchu, Peru, August 2012
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig

Masked Fruiteater, Oxapampa, Peru, July 2012
Photograph taken by and copy write Alex Durand Torres

In 2013 I went to Queensland Australia, where I saw my new favourite bird: Southern Cassowary. It looks more like a dinosaur than a bird. I also saw my 3000th bird at the beginning of the trip, a Regent Bowerbird. I did lots of other things too, like feeding wild dolphins, going on a whale watching boat and snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef.

Southern Cassowary – Mission Beach, Queensland, Australia, August 2013 –
Photograph taken by and copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Regent Bowerbird – My 3000th world bird
Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia, July 2013
Photograph taken by and copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig at the Cairn built by birders to mark the spot at McNamara’s
Road, Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, August 2013 for the rare Carpentarian Grasswren,
which reputedly is one of Australia’s hardest birds to see
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig

When I was 9 I decided that I wanted to go to all the continents before I was 15. At the time it seemed decades away, but my deadline is looming… as the song goes ‘always look on the bright side of life’. I only have one continent left (let’s forget it’s the most difficult to get to Antarctica).
TTFN (ta ta for now!)