BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner has spent much of his career reporting from dangerous destinations in Afghanistan, Colombia and Saudi Arabia (where he was shot no less than six times in 2004). But he also has a passion for birdwatching and wildlife photography. Here he shares a selection of his recent photographs and describes some of his most memorable trips.
The perimeter fence at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, is topped with layers of barbed wire. Inside this sprawling military base, used by western forces for nearly 20 years, security is relatively relaxed. But beyond the wire is where the Taliban insurgents move around at night, often blending in with the local population. Afghanistan is not a great destination for birdwatching – for safety reasons, apart from anything else – but on one reporting trip to Kandahar I found myself struck by the beauty of something I saw there. Just on the other side of the fence was a large, leafless bush and sitting in it was a flock of the most exquisite rose-coloured starlings, the evening sun lighting up their glorious pink and glossy black plumage.
Birds have a wonderful way of barging into your daily life, in my case even when I am on a news assignment or attending a conference. As Middle East correspondent I did a stint in Jerusalem reporting live on the political developments, which involved standing in front of a TV camera some distance from the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. With the earpiece and boom microphone in place I would go live at the top of each hour, but during downtime I was able to grab a few minutes to watch an extraordinary spectacle unfolding in the trees around a nearby pond. A large white-breasted kingfisher was busy chasing a tiny common kingfisher (the kind we get in Britain) round and round. It seemed like a blatant act of bullying to me, and I was so engrossed I nearly missed spotting a single hawfinch watching it all from a treetop. And no, I didn’t miss the next live report at the top of the hour!
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In 2020 I was lucky enough to squeeze in a filming expedition to Colombia in February, just before coronavirus took hold. We went with leading scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as they ventured into unexplored parts of the last remaining tropical forest in the Magdalena Valley. It was curiously empty of mammals – nearly all poached, sadly – but the trees were buzzing with birdlife, especially the dazzling, glittering hummingbirds, of which Colombia has more than 160 different species. In fact, the fauna was so rich and intense that at times I would be conducting an interview on camera while out of the corner of my eye I could see a fabulously plumaged tanager perched just behind the interviewee’s shoulder.
But the holy grail in remote birding destinations for me has to be Papua New Guinea. In 2016 I accompanied the veteran explorer Benedict Allen as he returned to visit the remote tribe he had lived with in his twenties. In a two-part BBC2 series entitled Birds of Paradise: The Ultimate Quest we journeyed deep into the interior, coping with malarial swamps, mosquitos, suffocating heat and truly awful food. For me, every minute was worth it. Ever since the age of eight, I had longed to see birds of paradise in the wild. It took huge perseverance and a lot of ingenuity by our brilliant local team to get me and my wheelchair up over mountain ranges and through jungles. Yet I will never forget the moment, shortly after dawn at nearly 10,000ft up in the misty highlands, when we watched the stunning display of a King of Saxony bird of paradise as it flung its feathers forward across its head, its song echoing out across the treetops. Just magical.
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