Gabriella Vukman
Upon first encountering Chris Doughty, his northern English twang and occasional scoffing chuckles paint a relaxed, jovial and eccentric character. It doesn’t take many sentences to realise that the bloke has a blazing enthusiasm for all things birds and birding.
From tremendous birding trips around the world to writing a book, explorer, entrepreneur and birding expert Chris Doughty is a force to be reckoned with.
Born in the 50’s and growing up in an industrial town in Lancashire Britain, life in the world of the working class looked very different indeed. Chris described a class system, wherein hobbies such as bird watching were not blue collar activities.
“My father didn’t like it. He would say, ‘I’ve got five sons. Four sportsmen and a bloody bird watcher’,” Chris said.
“He didn’t think it was the sort of thing a working-class boy should do. He told me once that it was for retired army officers. If I mentioned bird watching around the dinner table he’d say ‘tosser’.”
Whilst Chris maintained that he “never got any encouragement” for bird watching from his father as a youngster, he describes his mother being ”quite okay” with his fascination.
Upon discovering his love for bird watching as “a very young boy”, Chris described how his fascination with birds was ignited.
“Our parents would take us out into the countryside to collect blackberries. My mother would make blackberry jam and pies for us all from our findings. One day my mother showed me an English Robin, the red breasted kind you see on Christmas cards,” Chris said.
“I was amazed at how beautiful it was. Previously I thought there were only sparrows and starlings because I came from an industrial town.”
“The following day I went and got the observer’s book of British birds. It was the first book I ever bought. Now I have hundreds of books and have been hooked on birding ever since.”
Having written the first ever published field guide for the birds of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia in an unheard of twelve month period, Chris’ achievements swayed the attitude of his father from “you’ll never make any money from a published book,” to being “proud” of his bird watching son’s achievements.
Travelling between the three countries and the British Museum in London, Chris assembled one of Australia’s leading bird artists, along with a children’s book illustrator to capture the plumage of the subjects of his field guide.
“I wrote the whole thing in 12 months. An Englishman had already started a field guide on Vanuatu, New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands a few years before me. This guy published his book twenty years after I’d published mine. The text is better in his book but the illustrations are better in mine,” Chris said.
Chris’ published field guide was an achievement of many antecedents, with multiple species that had only previously been described, illustrated for the first time.
Chris was 19 when he immigrated to the politically morphing and hipster Australia of the 1970’s.
“One day my father called a family council meeting and said, ‘I’m thinking of immigrating to either South Africa, New Zealand or Australia.’ Deciding on Australia was the best decision he ever made,” Chris said.
Arriving via boat being the last of the ‘ten pound poms’ and being met by family friends at the docs, Chris instantly began to warm to the tribulations of Aussie life.
“Things were just so much better in Australia for someone who had a bit of ‘get up and go’ who was prepared to work hard. Australians will give you a fair go. I got three jobs the first day I arrived. They’d say, ‘look mate if you can do the job, it’s yours. If you can’t do the job we’ll fire you.’ That would never happen in England.”
Chris elaborated that “you’re better off being born at the bottom of the socio-economic pile in Australia than in England.”
“England still has the class system. As soon as you open your mouth you’re pigeon-holed, working class, middle class or upper class. They expect the working class to remember their station.”
“When I arrived I knew within two months that I’d never go back to Britain to live. I’d go back for a holiday but I’d never go back to live,” Chris said.
Chris also celebrated the vast and eclectic species of birds that call Australia home, however for Chris and his wife, Christmas in the summertime has never elicited the same cosy feel as in the UK.
“We decided to settle in Melbourne because my parent’s friends from our hometown in England had settled in Preston. We went to a migrant hostel in Springvale. It was beautiful and fantastic.”
“My parents were inspecting a home in Bayswater and we were looking around the garden when I spotted a Tawny Frogmouth. It was then I knew I had to convince my dad to buy that house. I never saw a Tawny Frogmouth there again but it became like an omen to me.”
After renting their first house in Croydon Chris and his wife bought a home and are still settled in Mooroolbark where Chris enjoys “the best view of the Dandenong Ranges” from his office.
“It was just luck that we settled in the Yarra Valley ,” Chris said.
I now know Melbourne like the back of my hand and this is a fantastic place for a birdwatcher to live. More Australians should take up bird watching.
Having worked in multinational corporations in mid-level management, Chris decided to turn his bird obsession into an entrepreneurial venture. Observing that “there were no Australian companies offering bird watching tours worldwide,” Chris began to formulate a business plan of action.
“My wife and I discussed it and she agreed to let me start my own bird tour company. If it didn’t work I could always go back to middle management,” Chris said.
“We had to make a decision. Do We go and borrow money from the bank or do we offer my services to an established travel company in Melbourne? My wife decided on the second option because she’s a bookkeeper. She didn’t like the idea of borrowing money from the bank.
Chris conducted some research and decided to approach a company called Peregrine expeditions.
Diverging from the company’s main focus on trekking in the Himalayas and white water rafting, Chris paid the company’s “flash little office in Little Collins st” a visit.
Chris requested admission to the managing director at the time Mr Ashford. Not accepting that he would need an appointment, Chris pushed past the secretary into the office anyway.
“Have you got an appointment,” Mr Ashford asked, to which Chris replied, “no, but I’ve got an idea on how to make money.” From there Chris built up a worldwide birding travel opportunity, making the name ‘Peregrine Expeditions’ his own when the company went bankrupt three years later.
“I put all the tours together and I approached overseas ground operators. I would offer one tour to each continent, so six tours a year. I had a mailing list which had been Peregrine’s mailing list. And a very nice thing happened to me. The guy who owned the largest natural history bookstore in Melbourne gave me his client list. That helped me get a lot of bookings.”
“I went out on my own 38 years ago and it’s just grown ever since.”
“I love what I do and birding is a wonderful way to make a living. If you enjoy what you do, then you’ve never worked a day in your life,” Chris said.
“The same people have been travelling with me for twenty years. They’ll book one tour per year for twenty years. Another guy took early retirement and went on every tour I did for the rest of his life.
Chris said his clients are “more like friends.”
Another of Chris’ business ventures was bringing overseas bird watching groups to Australia, among book writing and binocular selling which he came up with during COVID.
“I conducted three week bird watching tours up the east coast of Australia starting in Tasmania and progressing up to Cairns. We’d fly to Melbourne and have a 20 seater bus from budget booked and then off we’d go. Then we’d fly from there to Brisbane and then we’d go bird watching there and then we’d fly to cairns and go bird watching that area in the ..tablelands.”
Chris chuckled when he let slip that he charged the American tour companies 30 per cent more than the British, when taking international groups around Australia.
“The Americans were 30 percent harder work for me than the British,” Chris said.
“Every year I had bird tours in India, china, Africa etc writing to me so I would get lots of that material coming in and I would read through it all and if I liked the sound of one of the operators or thought he was a good price then I would hire them.”
Being held up at gunpoint in New Guinea was one of Chris’ most gripping stories.
“A group felled a tree across the road and came out with machetes and guns. We couldn’t drive over the tree nor go around it because there’s jungle on either side. They asked for money. And they know about money belts. Luckily I only had a little bit of money under my shirt to give them. I had the rest in my boot and had hidden my binoculars in a sack of rice.”
Coming up in November Chris is leading his final tour trip to West Papua which is “far safer” than Papua New Guinea, to see the birds of paradise.
“I’m going to retire from Peregrine bird tours because I’m 70 years of age now and my health is still good. The thing is, I’ve seen most of the world’s birds so anything I haven’t seen is just a variation of something I have seen.”
“The vast majority are found in New Guinea and they’re just spectacular. The local natives of New Guinea shoot them and wear the feathers in their headdresses. These headdresses are passed down from father to son for generations.”
“The West Papuans make money now from bird watching groups like mine. If they know where display trees are for birds of paradise they charge you a fee to take you to see them. It’s Eco-tourism in action as it is all in the name of preserving the birds and we’re quite happy to pay them.”
Having seen over 8,200 of the world’s ten thousand species of bird, only eleven people in the world have seen more birds than Chris. Further, having observed 830 species of bird in Australia alone, Chris has seen the fourth largest number of birds in the Nation.
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and now it’s time for me to start to slow down a bit. It doesn’t mean i will stop bird watching overseas, it just means that i’ll go with my wife and my eldest son.”
Being able to commit tens of thousands of names and plumage types to memory, Chris is one of Australia’s leading birding experts and friends and clients alike ask him often to take them with him on his many adventures.
Chris said, “the great thing about bird watching is that although I could write a list of the birds I was going to see yesterday, there’s always something unusual. You always see the unexpected and that’s what makes it interesting.”
