About Us

Tim Davis and Tim Jones live in North Devon from where they run a small environmental consultancy, DJEnvironmental. They make the short voyage to Lundy as often as they can. The idea to produce a new book on the birds of Lundy first struck during a holiday on the island in September 1999. Work began shortly afterwards but it wasn’t until mid-2005 that they put their combined feet on the accelerator, completing the manuscript in February 2007. They continued to work on further updates right up until the book went to the printer on 29 August 2007.

Tim Davis

Tim was born in Somerset and lived the itinerant life of RAF parents until settling in North Devon in his early teens. He first stayed on Lundy in September 1974 when an encounter with a Hoopoe fired his imagination and birdwatching quickly became an all-consuming pastime.

He has worked for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) and WWF International. Before moving from North Devon in 1983 to work for the BTO, he coordinated the Birds of Estuaries Enquiry counts on the Taw & Torridge Estuary and contributed National Wildfowl Counts from two local wetlands. His favourite bird habitat is broad-leaf woodland (“there’s nothing to match a Wood Warbler in full song”) and while there is little of this on Lundy, the lure of the island has never diminished.

Tim Jones

Tim was born in Devon, brought up in the Channel Islands and Gloucestershire and studied Geography at the University of Durham. A passionate naturalist and conservationist, he has been watching birds for as long as he can remember.

He has worked for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), Wetlands International and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. He first visited Lundy in 1984 and has returned in most years since. Tim says: “Watching the Swallow migration on Lundy is something I never tire of, especially in spring, knowing that these birds have already flown the length of Africa, crossed the Sahara and Mediterranean and may be going on to raise two or three broods in Ireland or Scotland before flying the best part of 10,000 kilometres back the other way”.

Mike Langman

Mike left Art College in 1983 and for the next nine years worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) at their headquarters at Sandy in Bedfordshire. His work can be seen on nearly every RSPB reserve, on identification cards and several large murals in information centres and hides, and on the RSPB website.

A full-time bird illustrator since 1992, Mike has worked for many book publishers and organisations and his work regularly appears in all of the UK’s bird watching magazines. He has illustrated many bird books over the last 22 years, notably the Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guide to Garden Birds, a series of Hamlyn Bird Guides, the T & AD Poyser Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East and a Guide to the birds of South East Asia.

His artwork regularly appears in the RSPB’s quarterly magazine Nature’s Home, and his interpretation work for nature centres and information boards can be found all around Devon, including Lundy. He serves as Art Editor for Devon Birds, his home county bird organisation, for which he was also County Bird Recorder for many years. He has his own website here.

Spotted Flycatcher by Mike Langman from The Birds of Lundy