Hello from Reading!

Hi All!

My name's Chris and I work in digital marketing/social media, so it's surprising I haven't joined a bird forum yet.

I got into birding about 18 months ago when my family moved into a large house on Honey End Lane, opposite Prospect Park. Previously, my experience of birds had been the most common you could think, but after a few days in the new house we started noticing blues, greens, yellows, all sorts of weird coloured birds!

We started identifying the birds and after getting bored with those in the garden, I started going farther afield to see what I could find.

I regularly take trips around Reading, my favourite place being Hosehill Lake in Theale, but after skimming through the forum I see lots of interesting new places for me to visit!

Currently using a cheapish pair of Nikon binoculars, but will upgrade those next week when I get paid. Dabbling with the idea of photography, but at the moment am just happy at looking out for new birds.

Hope to bump into some of you soon!

A warm welcome to the forum Chris, you are starting in exactly the same way as many of us, when I moved up to Tilehurst on the edge of Sulham woods, I was amazed to see the variety of birds coming into our garden and started taking pictures of them for identification. It snowballed from there.:)

Hosehill is a great little lake, drop down there when I can, but you need a good set of bins to see much of the wildlife, 10x bins is about the minimum, I bought a scope for the less closeby places.:)

Welcome from me too, Chris!:)

I don't know any bird sites near Reading as you two do, but if you might drive down to the coast for a day, I can recommend Keyhaven, Stanpit and just about anywhere in the New Forest area.

I'm afraid that my camera and binocular equipment isn't up to the standard of Rolf's, but that doesn't stop me enjoying watching wildlife down here!