Alan Heavisides biography



Alan with a young Merlin

My earliest memory of actively birdwatching was when I was about 11 years old and found my first nest, a Chaffinch, in the local park in my home town of South Shields at the mouth of the River Tyne. Unusually for my generation I did not take the eggs and was very disappointed when they later disappeared!

My birding really took off when at 13 I went to the local grammar school and met the man who became a great influence on my life - Fred Grey, my English teacher , (known by the boys as “Basher”), who ran the school bird club. I was hooked from then on and was soon cycling to the coast alongside Basher and with lots of mist net poles strapped to our bikes.  



A (slightly) younger Alan, also with a Merlin.

I was a keen scout throughout my teens and spent a lot of time on the hills of the North of England and also in Scotland particularly in the Cairngorms.  This combined well with birding and I developed a lasting interest in birds of the uplands. I found my first merlin nest on a Durham moor when I was about 15.

After four years at university in London, a year travelling and working across Europe and the Middle East on a motorbike, and a year on a postgraduate course in South Wales I got married and started work in Northumberland where we lived for the next 9 years or so. During that time I was heavily involved with the birding scene, met many well-known birders, became fully qualified as a ringer and ended up as the Northumberland and Tyneside Bird Club Recorder.

In 1983 I moved to Edinburgh and a job in what is now Edinburgh Napier University where I worked until retiring in 2010. When I arrived in Edinburgh I was soon involved with the Lothian ringing group and started a study of breeding merlins in the Lammermuir Hills which is still ongoing today.  Over the years I have been involved with various projects including the annual sea bird ringing on the Forth Islands.



Alan helping out on the BTO stand at Gardening Scotland

I joined the Lothian and Borders Raptor Study Group as it started in 1984 and have been the chair now for many years. I have been a BTO member since about 1974 and have had the voluntary role of Lothian Regional Representative for more years than I can remember! I’m also presently serving on the Regional Network Committee which gets me to Thetford now and again.

Always a great fan of the BTO I have enjoyed taking part in and often helping organise the many useful surveys carried out by volunteers across the region. The arrival of BTO Scotland was in my view a very welcome development and I’m sure this has helped develop the volunteer base in Scotland. The introduction of online surveys has been particularly timely and almost all Lothian volunteers are now happily, or at least reasonably happily, entering their data online.

We are lucky in Lothian in that we have a good and growing pool of BTO volunteers.  Breeding Bird Survey numbers have increased for several years in a row. BirdTrack is a great innovation and I personally enjoy adding complete ‘species lists’ after a birding outing. After so many years of ‘atlasing’ for both the national and local atlas this is a great outlet for that ‘listing with a purpose instinct’.

Alan Heavisides

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