About The Author

Russell Slack has been interested in birds for as long as he can remember, a passion fuelled through growing up in the countryside near York. Like many of his age he learnt his trade in places within walking and cycling distance of home before progressing during his teens to dashing around Britain in pursuit of rarities.

Extensive travel and prolonged periods in the field in Asia and the Middle East as well as the Caribbean and Central and South America curbed Russell's listing desire during the late 1980s and 1990s when it became apparent that most rare birds here were common birds elsewhere!

In between trips abroad the author became more interested in self-finding and patch watching, the emphasis often on trying to find the unusual. Living in York yielded an excellent local patch on the ‘ings’ of the Lower Derwent Valley NNR. His coastal fix became the Gothic backdrop of Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast. Russell's first major find was a pre-split Pacific Golden Plover in Lincolnshire. He has since been fortunate to find a number of exciting rarities such as Isabelline Wheatear, Hume’s Leaf Warbler and several Olive-backed Pipits on his unfashionable coastal patch along with many species now considered ‘scarcities’. Following a degree in statistics the author returned to York where a job in research gave the flexibility of dropping everything at the sign of an easterly together with long holidays for extended trips to Asia! A further research post took the author to Sheffield in 1995, shortly after which he co-authored and published Rare and Scarce Birds in Yorkshire.

In 2000 he fulfilled the opportunity to work on birds full-time and joined BirdGuides. There he established and ran the company's online news service Bird News Extra. Between 2000 and 2007 Russell undertook numerous projects for BirdGuides, working on acclaimed products such as Birds of the Western Palearctic interactive and British Birds interactive. He also wrote the weekly rare bird reviews for the BirdGuides website as well as numerous ID articles and general birding articles for the BirdGuides webzine.

His return to York in 2005 was followed by a return to research, the break from dealing with birds on a daily basis providing the stimulus to write this book. Russell lives in Wheldrake, on the edge of the ‘ings’, with his wife Linda and daughters India and Ruby.

Ian Wallace

In the field since 1944, Ian Wallace has travelled four continents and worked on three. His field ornithology includes service in posts as various as second chairman of the BBRC, alleged stringer, Editor of BWP and BWP(C) and author of inspiring books.

Although now "retired" to compulsive patchwork and small group exploration, Ian keeps a keen eye (and sharpish voice)on the bureaucracy of rare bird recording. Proudly "pre-digital" in fieldcraft, his latest migration study takes him to Inishboffin off Galway.

Julian Hough

Julian has been interested in birds since the age of six. As a teenager, he spent all his spare time birding around the British Isles in the pursuit of rare birds and was a familiar face at many twitches.

His passion for birds and a specific interest in field identification has led to extensive travel to many far-flung corners of the globe, including extended periods in India, Nepal, China, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and Central and South America.

In the early 90s, he worked as a journalist on Britain’s top-selling bird magazine Birdwatching and was responsible for authoring their main identification articles. In addition he has written many identification and feature articles for magazines including Wildbird, Birding, Birding World and Birdwatch. He has also worked as a research biologist, studying field identification and bird migration, for both Long Point and Cape May Bird Observatories. The latter location is one of his favourite spots and a place he calls his second home.

Julian is a talented and widely published artist, with a variety of work included in many books and periodicals. Since developing an interest in photography, he has become quite an accomplished lensman with work published in numerous books and birding magazines across Europe and North America.

Originally from Bolton, England, he currently resides in New Haven, CT, USA with his wife Sandy, their son Alex and their bulldog Bella.

Ray Scally

Ray has been drawing birds in his native Ireland from an early age and is influenced by many current Artists. He is widely published in County Bird Reports throughout the UK, especially in his current home county of Cheshire. He has illustrations published in The Essential Guide to the Birds of the Isles of Scilly; Birds in Cheshire and Wirral; British Birds; Rare Birds Weekly; Isles of Scilly Nature Review; Spurn Wildlife and Yorkshire Birding amongst many others. He was featured in the Harper Collins’ Calendar for Birdwatch Magazine in 2005. He is currently working on a totally new edition of The Ultimate Site Guide to Scarcer British Birds where he is the sole artist amongst other current projects. At present he spends most of his birding time on his local Cheshire 10K square or Spurn Point East Yorkshire.

Alex Lees

Dr Alexander Lees is an ecologist currently based at the University of East Anglia. He recently completed his PhD studying the impacts of habitat fragmentation on Amazonian birds. However, he admits that many a quiet moment in the rainforest in deepest Brazil was spent wondering upon which windswept headland he might next chase vagrants and how those birds came to be there.

Alex has travelled extensively across every Continent except Antarctica, and has spent protracted time periods at Western Palearctic and Nearctic migration hotspots including assistant stints at the Atlantic Bird Observatory (Nova Scotia) and North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory (Orkney) which have helped to direct his thoughts on bird orientation and dispersal mechanisms. He has written various papers on vagrancy (often co-authored with James Gilroy) for a variety of journals that have attempted to expand upon and redefine previous vagrancy mechanism hypotheses.

James Gilroy

James was born in Watford and brought up in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. His father was a keen birder and natural historian, and consequently he began venturing into the field at an early age – he claims to have been using binoculars whilst still in the pram! Much of his childhood was spent in pursuit of birds and wildlife, and like most young birders he developed a keen interest in bird migration, as well as the unpredictable element of vagrancy. He left Yorkshire to study ecology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and during his studies he gained the opportunity to travel widely in search of birds, joining expeditions to many seldom-visited areas from the tropics to the high arctic. He went on to do a PhD at UEA, studying the ecology of the yellow wagtail, and now works in Norwich as a freelance ornithologist. His maintains a great interest in the phenomenon of avian vagrancy, and devotes much of his time to studying the causes of these remarkable migratory errors. The remainder he spends in the field, searching for the vagrants themselves!