careers or business with birds? (4 Viewers)

[alasdairturner]

Many of my bird photos are shot while I am working as a climbing guide. Last year I offered to volunteer to help some biologists set up cameras at eagles nests. After a couple of days of work volunteering I ended up getting hired for two weeks of paid work (photo below is from that work). Most of that work involved climbing to golden eagle nests and removing prey remains to determine what they are eating. There is a good chance that work will happen again next year also. So to answer your original question I cant say I work with birds all the time, but I do work around birds an awful lot and sometimes work directly with them.

By the way - I had lots of advice from people about what I could and could not do for work. I went to university, got an office job like your supposed to and six years later decided my life sucked. Dont listen to others who think you can't do what you want for a living. You can! Dont waste six years figuring that out like I did.

 

[Jaysan]

Wow. You got to hold one. Brilliant.

 

[Mark Lew1s]

A slightly different perspective...

I've worked with birds for about 4 years now. Before then I was a chef for about 7 years. I went from a very stressful, poorly paid job, to working for a conservation group (where I learned a huge amount), and now I work as a 'marine wildlife observer'. I bird for a living, and I bird when I'm not working. I would not say I'm rich but financially I'm quite comfortable and I have a girlfriend and a social life. I'm happier than I've ever been.

It can be done!

However, you should definitely take the advice given by others. This is a pretty competitive field so if you want to make a career out of it you need to make yourself stand out from the crowd. You can do this in a few ways....

Get as good a relevant degree as possible...

Volunteer Volunteer Volunteer...it looks great on your cv and you can experience several different aspects of the work you might end up doing.

Get in with the right people....unfortunate but true. If you can prove to these folk that you're reliable, personable, intelligent and a solid birder, it can be a massive help.

You're still young so you have plenty of time to work on this! But also, don't put all your eggs in the one basket....

Good luck.

 

[YourBirdOasis]

Not sure if anyone mentioned it yet, but the Ornithology Jobs list maintained by the OSNA (Ornithological Societies of North America) is a great resource for all sorts of paid positions, volunteer work, and graduate school opportunities in ornithology. http://www.osnabirds.org/on/ornjobs.htm

 

[mr.sim]

The advice thus far is all about proper ornithology related jobs. Can somebody make a living of the photographs they take? How does this work?

Normally very difficult. There's actually books on wildlife photography in terms of a career. But if you think about it, how many people have a digital camera and can take their own photos, so how much time/money/effort would it take just to get that one shot that stands out and might sell a few copies. Then these copies don't exactly get you a fortune, so you have to keep on churning out top class photos that will sell...

 

[BirdingRob]

If I have read this thread right, most birders here who work in the "industry" have joined it from a young age (under 25) and then progressed with a mix of

1. experience often gained initially though volunteering or taking low paid introductory jobs
AND
2. qualifications -either degrees or ringing certificates or ideally both.

People seem to be saying you need both experience and qualifications these days

It looks like people also assume you start out in your country of origin (eg British in Britain etc)

I think there is another alternative route into at least bird tour guiding (and probably more careers) which might be worth considering:

It may be easier if you work in a country which people want to visit and become known as a local expert -ie know where birds are and when to see them.

The trick is to earn money and have free time to bird in your chosen country while your reputation develops. One such job is English teacher.

I am now as a English Teacher of a Foreign Language. To a reasonable extent I can choose the country I want to work and bird in - with a trade-off between these two requirements (and the pay that each country gives you). I am currently in Libya and birding about 75 full days a year (every Friday plus part of my holidays).

I write a daily blog and am becoming thought of (rightly or wrongly) as a Libya expert. I don't know whether its given me a USP but I have had two unsolicited offers to guide a bird tour (or part of it) and asked by a Lonely Planet editor to help her write a section on birds in Libya. My issue is the opposite of most people on this thread - do I want to get sucked in to the industry? The answer is still NO!

I am happy with my career choices but if I start answering "YES" to these invitations then in a sense I a have been offered a way into the industry!

However if were young birder who wanted to get into the industry this would all look very attractive

Hope this advice is helpful

 

[BrownThornbill]

I thought the same. My advice: make sure you get a Phd, forget a relationship, money etc. A be prepared for putting a pair of bin.s on feeling like you're getting dressed for work.

There were many good things about my ten years working in ornithological research/conservation but I wish I'd just done a year or so, so I realised the image and the reality are very different

Hi Steve, many thanks for your words. I do agree with you 100%. I am getting confused about my future in these days, just because I realised that sometimes the birds passion is totally different from what it thought to expect from a job about the birds. After a Bsc in Biology and a MSc in Ornithology, I got my first two job opportunities: 9 months in a seabird conservation association, and 3 months as field assistant in a ornithological research project. Here I have not enough time and space to write about it. Anyway thanks to those experiences I realised that birds are definitely my love, but this is not my life. "Forget a social life, be comfortable living entire days in the field from early cold mornings or to chilly nights, be prepared to have ridiculous low wages, really strong competition with lots of skilled applicants". So, just now I was wondering to change my career at 25 years old, I'm interested also in other kid of studies but with real and concrete hope to get a good job there. Because I'd like to have a social life, enough money for a quiet family-life, and spending my free time about birds volunteering, I won't never leave them, but I won't make of them my job.