About and Contact
@LeedsBirder
Hi, I'm Paul. otherwise known as @LeedsBirder on twitter. I love my wildlife and you can typically find me watching my neighborhood Peregrine Falcons, out and about birding or working on various conservation projects such as the Bradford Peregrine Trail. I enjoy filming wildlife and particularly birds. I'm an Ambassador for Kowa Sporting Optics who make the best optics for phonescoping. I'm frequently asked about phonescoping when I'm out and about, so I thought I'd put together this site to pass on my phonescoping experience to others.
Here are some highlights of where my digiscoped footage has appeared on TV, gone viral on social media or just now and again has done a little bit of good:
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My film of Black-necked Grebes appeared on BBC Springwatch in 2018.
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I won the hotly contested BirdGuides Photo of the week in April 2023 with a video of Little Gulls.
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I shot and produced a successful video bid for £357,000 funding to purchase a large part of Fairburn Ings nature reserve.
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Early, traffic light nesting Mistle Thrushes went viral and ended up on national TV, on the ITV News at Ten.
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RaptorAid used my Short-eared Owl footage to promote a fundraising appeal for satellite tagging these amazing birds. Chris Packham narrating my film? Doesn't get any better than that.
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My Kingfisher footage was shown on the Spanish TV channel RTVE on Aqui La Tierra.
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Two of my short wildlife films made the Official Selection at the Get Smart Film Festival 2019.
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I won the September monthly prize for the 2017 Digiscoper of the year competition run by Swarovski, for my Waxwing Heaven film.
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I've appeared in Audubon Science with a Black Heron video that went mildly viral on t'internet. It keeps going viral when it gets reposted by other people. It has also featured in National Geographic magazine. Can't resist playing the nightime daytime game!
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When I don't have a scope attached to my phone I like to capture no-nonsense Yorkshire weather in timelapse. I'm still trying to better this effort from 2023, described by the Deputy Chief Meteorologist at the Met Office as "an absolute cracker of a #weather timelapse, one of the best I think I've ever seen."