Tony cannot remember being uninterested in birds and feels deeply privileged to find himself employed throughout his life to continue his hobby! After a Ph.D spent waist-deep in peat studying hydrology in a Welsh raised bog, two ornithological expeditions to west Greenland and several years working for the Nature Conservancy Council in Wales and the Scottish Highlands, he moved to the (then) Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge to concentrate on (largely applied) waterbird research, a field in which he has happily worked in ever since. He moved to Denmark in 1993, where he is currently Professor of Waterbird Ecology at Aarhus University as well as visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He continues to feel extremely privileged to have worked on a range of issues, largely centred around population dynamics, but including hunting disturbance, protected area management, offshore windfarms and climate change. His work has extended throughout the Arctic and around many exotic parts of the Northern Hemisphere and he has been very fortunate to meet and work with very many talented, kind and selfless researchers from around the world.