Mya-Rose birding in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador in 2010
Chilling out with penguins in Antarctica
By the age of three, Mya-Rose was keeping a record of the birds she had observed in the wild, both around her home turf in Somerset, UK, and on family holidays in the British Isles and in more exotic climes. At 11, she began the Birdgirl blog that would put her on many people’s radars. It was a place not only to share her latest sightings and photos from the field with fans, but also a space to spotlight conservation projects and environmental issues that had sparked either her inspiration or indignation.
As for where the persona “Birdgirl” came from, it was a fairly pragmatic origin story: “I came up with the name when I was eight… I was going birding in Ecuador and needed an email address. It just stuck after that!”
By the age of just 13, while trekking through the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil, she reached a milestone that others might spend decades aspiring to, logging her 5,000th species.