In just less than a month’s time the British Birdwatching Fair, the ‘Glastonbury’ of bird fairs, will open its gates for the 21st time. An estimated 20,000+ visitors will come to the Birdfair site at Egleton Nature Reserve, Rutland Water, UK between Friday 21st Aug and Sunday the 24th. They’ll be greeted by around 300 exhibitors, ranging from globally known optics companies like Swarovski Optik, to tour companies, eco-lodges (like the wonderful Canopy Tower in Panama I visited - and loved - in April this year), Tourism Boards, clothing manufacturers, photographers, artists, and conservation organisations. On top of that a veritable gaggle of British birding ‘celebs’ - including Bill Oddie, Chris Packham, Simon King, Charlie Moores (one day, one day) - will be giving lectures, talks, and workshops.

Not bad for something that began as a local event held in 1987 at what was then Rutland Water Nature Reserve and called “The Wildfowl Bonanza”!

Organised by two of the nicest people in birding, Martin Davies and Tim Appleton, the Birdfair has become, as it proudly advertises itself, the BIGGEST birdwatching event in the world. Its aim from the outset has been ‘to get birdwatchers together to celebrate birds, to develop a commercial fair for the birdwatching industry’ and - which is the bit frankly that interests me and why I’m plugging the Birdfair today - ‘to support international conservation projects’. Specifically conservation projects run by BirdLife International and its partners in countries all over the world.

Since the first project it supported back in 1989 - the “Stop the Massacre Campaign” which was devised to highlight the slaughter of migrant birds across southern Europe - the Birdfair has raised more than £2,000,000/$3.5,000,000 - two-thirds of which comes from the £10 entrance fee all of which is given to BirdLife - to ‘help save birds and their habitats in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America’.

Recent projects have included BirdLife International’s ‘Saving Madagascar’s Fragile Wetlands’ (2003), ‘Saving Gurney’s Pittas and their forest home’ (2005), and ‘Saving the Pacific’s Parrots’ (2006). All the proceeds from 2007, 2008, and - for the final time in this ’series’ - 2009 are being used to support Birdlife’s ‘Preventing Extinctions Programme (PEP)‘ (of which, of course, 10,000 Birds is proud to be a Species Champion).

In 2008 a whole suite of Critically Endangered species - including Sociable Lapwing Vanellus gregarius, Spoon-billed Sandpiper Eurynorhynchus pygmeus, Dwarf Olive Ibis Bostrychia bocagei, Azores Bullfinch Pyrrhula murina, Tuamotu Kingfisher Todiramphus gambieri and Araripe Manakin Antilophia bokermanniwere - were profiled in the hope of finding them individual Species Champions.

2009’s theme centres around ‘Lost and Found’ species and the bird species being used to graphically illustrate this is the beautiful Cebu Flowerpecker Dicaeum quadricolor (artwork, left, copyright Robert Gillmor), a bird officially thought to have become extinct early in the 20th century after the clearance of most of the island’s forests, but which was rediscovered by birder and biologist R J Timmins in 1992. The global population of the Cebu Flowerpecker is between just 85 - 100 individuals which cling on in a few tiny slivers of forest protected by local communities.

Had the flowerpecker been found earlier (or had never been declared extinct) how much more of its forest habitat would there be now? As Birdlife’s Martin Fowlie writes in this year’s Birdfair Programme, “How much more secure would the species’ future have been had it not been prematurely written off?”

With the money raised from 2009’s Birdfair, BirdLife will embark on a new phase of the PEP: the search for ‘lost’ - and therefore unprotected - birds. These include such species as the Hooded Seedeater Sporophila melanops, a bird last seen in 1893 (!), the Slender-billed Curlew Numenius tenuirostris, the Western Palearctic and Southwest Asia’s rarest bird (and subject of a huge ongoing search), and the Pink-headed Duck Rhodonessa caryophyllacea, a species that may - or may not - still exist in tiny numbers in inaccessible swamp regions of northern Myanmar/Burma.

Whether these species - and twelve others BirdLife plans to search for - do still exist one thing is fairly certain: habitats around the world are disappearing at a horrendous rate, and without specific conservation programmes to protect them and the world’s other Critically Endangered species they won’t exist for very much longer.

The British Birdwatching Fair is a remarkably important fund-raising event, and as Tim Appleton and Martin Davies write on the official website:

It is remarkable to reflect that, as we enjoy ourselves again at this year’s Birdfair, standing around in tents in a field in Rutland, there are now forests, wetlands, grasslands and albatrosses that have a more secure future thanks to the collective efforts of Birdfair supporters. Working together, we are making a difference.

It is remarkable, and it is a fantastic get-together too. I’ll be there on the Friday catching up with friends and colleagues and I’m looking forward to it immensely. I mean, who doesn’t have fun at a 21st Birthday party…

See you there?