Peter Holden

Peter Holden has been passionately interested in birds and wildlife from an early age. He was a member of staff of the RSPB for more than 40 years, initially running its junior membership (YOC - later WEX) and also developed other ways of taking the fascination of birds to large numbers of children and adults. He was responsible for devising the annual Big Garden Birdwatch that now involves half a million people each January. In 1995/6 he joined Bill Oddie for a series of BBC programmes called 'Bird in the Nest' and presented two series of science programmes for Channel 4. He regularly gives popular lectures to a wide variety of audiences including some with his son, artist Andy Holden. He is also a lecturer on a number of cruise ships. Peter is author or joint-author of 16 titles and was awarded an MBE for services to Nature Conservation in 2009.