Sharon Pinner tells Amanda about her experiences of Wildlife on the Run

I always admire the bird photos taken by my friend and fellow nature writer, Sharon Pinner, and was even more impressed when I found out she’d taken most of them on her regular running routes south of Cambridge.

“I’m so lucky that I can reach footpaths just a few metres from our front door”, she tells me. “And run- birding is great because you can travel that bit further than walking and aren’t limited to roads and bridleways as you would be with cycling”.

Sharon was motivated during lockdown to make the most of her time running and she’s continued now restrictions have eased. She shows me the compact digital camera with a powerful zoom she carries either in her hand or pocket. “This doubles as binoculars”, she says, “and means that I have some hope of identifying birds I see some distance away once I’m home”.

I ask Sharon what her running partners think of her squeezing in birding on their runs. “My usual running partner has got used to me stopping quite a few times during a 3 to 6 mile run, and I can still run without stopping when I need to, in a half- marathon for example”.

Sharon regularly sees her favourite birds, Yellowhammers, and has taken great pictures of singing Common Whitethroats. “It’s always a treat to see our local Barn Owl when I run in the evenings and I was once completely surrounded by feeding Swifts and Swallows as I ran alongside a field of oil- seed rape”.

You can read more about Sharon’s run- birding and her other wildlife adventures on her blog https://wildlifeontherun. wordpress.com/