Phil Hammond

Phil Hammond was born in Canada, but spent his boyhood in small villages in rural Norfolk, England, where he grew a passion for nature and birds. It was there that he acquired what Norfolk people in those days called “a countryman’s eye”.

Although he has travelled to more than 30 countries, his home base for the last 50 years has been Auckland and he is proud to be a Kiwi.

In his 20s, 30s, and 40s sport, career, and young family took most of his time but he always had a pair of binoculars and a bird book or two. He owns over 100 books on ornithology and first joined New Zealand’s ‘Forest and Bird’ over 30 years ago.

His avian interest turned full circle when, in 2003, he dumped his casual NZ bird list and started from scratch listing only birds absolutely positively identified, and a general interest returned to a passionate obsession. Since then his NZ list (birds seen in the NZ bio-geographic region) has passed 250 species, and — except a successful twitch — he loves nothing better than watching a flock of 1000s of shorebirds for 4 or 5 hours hoping to pick out something unusual from the mass. His favourite “ticks” on his NZ list, have been as diverse as Black Robin, Bounty Island Shag, Dunlin, Straw-necked Ibis, and Franklins Gull.

He has served on the executive NZFB council at Miranda for several years, as well as the Bird Roost Advisory Group in the Manukau harbour, and is a regular attendee at OSNZ meetings, censuses etc. He really enjoys showing visitors our birds, especially the endemics, and knows well where to find them.