Welcome to Ecotone Journeys

If you are reading this, you have found your way to a new small home on the internet — one built for a particular kind of traveller. Someone who reads the itinerary closely. Who wants to stand still for a while, in a place that will reward standing still, and be shown what to look for.

What these notes are

I have led small-group birdwatching journeys for thirty years, and for most of that time the writing that goes with the trips has lived in trip reports and long email chains. Field Notes is a place to bring some of that writing back into the open — occasional dispatches from the field, target-species writeups, and news of new journeys as they come into view.

The pace will be slow. There is no schedule to hit. When a season closes and I have something worth saying about it, I will say it here.

What the journeys feel like

The best way to describe the trips is to tell you what a morning on one of them tends to look like. We are up while it is still dark, driving to the edge of a reedbed we chose for a reason. We are on the boardwalk before the birds are. Coffee comes out of thermoses. A Bittern booms two or three times from somewhere close, and someone in the group who has never heard one before says something under their breath. We wait.

That is the shape of the day, and the shape of the trip. Small group. Early mornings by choice. Long, unhurried sessions in the places where the birds are actually going to be, guided by someone who has been there before and knows what the light will do at 05:47.

What’s next

If you are new here, the Journeys page is the fastest way to see the lineup — one journey open for reservations now (Norfolk & Suffolk in May 2027), five more announced and opening for registration over the next two years.

You can also register your interest in an upcoming trip and we will contact you personally the moment it opens, before we announce it more widely.

Thank you for being here. See you in the field.