Grumpy Old Birder #33 – ‘Cool change’
“…I don’t care if the grass is greener on the other side of the hill. What’s the point of worrying about that if you can’t even appreciate the colours of everyday life…“
Over the last half dozen years Bo Beolens (aka the Fatbirder) has had his straight-talking column ‘The Grumpy Old Birder’ published in three different magazines. This year he’s decided to publish them online on their own website, ‘The Grumpy Old Birder, and at the same time record and publish them as a short podcast here on Talking Naturally. We’re delighted to welcome Bo to what we think is the perfect platform for the ‘Grumpy Old Birder’ podcasts!
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Bo Beolens (aka ‘The Grumpy Old Birder’ alias ‘Fatbirder’) has been birding off and on for more than half a century – one day he hopes to be good at it. In 1998 he discovered the internet, but was frustrated by not being able to find what he was looking for – so created ‘Fatbirder’ to fill the gap. In 2001 he had the same frustrating finding no organisation to represent disabled birders interests he set up the ‘disabled birders
association’, which recently changes its name to ‘Birding For All’ which now has around 800 members. He has always considered writing his one skill and after a fun time trying to compile a list for his website that some had suggested on birds named after people he and a colleague wrote ‘Whose Bird’ which A&C Black published. While this is just about vernacular names the research had so many overlaps that they and another colleague began to compile similar works on mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Johns Hopkins University have so far published both ‘The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals’ and ‘The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles’. Bo also offers arranged tours for couples and small groups through his ‘Anytime Tours’ website and has recently launched the webs’ first ‘comparison’ website for birding tours ‘Birders Travel’. Anglers now have a similar web resource in ‘Fatfisherman’ and photographers are catered for by Bo’s son on ‘Fatphotographer’.
