Jeff has enjoyed bird-watching all of his life. He worked as a teacher of Information Technology and has been lecturing about wildlife since 1980 on such topics as Ecuador, New Zealand, Australia and Bird Families. He has travelled widely and his concentration on South America in the 90’s led him to be one of the founder committee members of the Neotropical Bird Club. His interests broadened to all aspects of wildlife and more recently he has been recording wildlife in Finnmark.
This talk highlights the superb birds seen on a trip to south-west China in the winter. Yunnan has a varied landscape with snow-capped mountains, lakes, deep gorges and rich sub-tropical forest in the south. At first, visiting in winter, would appear an unusual idea, but the lowland forests along the Burmese border hold a strong resident avifauna and the region is the wintering ground for migrants from nearly all points of the compass. Many of the miss-placed eastern rarities that reach the UK shores in the autumn were headed for the forests of Yunnan to join the laughing-thrushes and pheasants that grace the remaining forests.