AN EXPERT bird watcher is moving up the pecking order.

Toby Collett, assistant warden at the Saltholme wildlife reserve and discovery park, on Teesside, has landed the top job at one of the UK’s most famous bird reserves.

He says the knowledge and experience he has gleaned and support he has received during his stay on Teesside has helped win him the post of warden of Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore reserves in his native Lincolnshire.

The reserves, like Saltholme, are run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

“I am only as good as I am because of the people I have had around me, so I am as much a product of Saltholme,’’ The 32-year-old said. “I have been welcomed into the arms of the birding community here."

Mr Collett, a keen member of the Teesmouth Bird Club, moved north from Cleethorpes four years ago.

He caused a sensation three months into his arrival on Teesside by spotting only the second Glaucous-winged Gull ever to have been recorded in the British Isles on the Saltholme reserve.

Mr Collett will be missed by a former mentor, Dave Braithwaite, the site manager at Saltholme, who as former head of countryside conservation at the Bishop Burton College in East Yorkshire, taught him as an undergraduate.

Mr Braithwaite said: ”Toby`s enthusiasm for bird conservation is unquestionable and his promotion to warden at Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore reserves is excellent progression for him and to an area where migration will be very much a feature of the bird spectacle.

“We will of course be sorry to see him go and miss that infectious enthusiasm but wish him all the very best in his future with the RSPB.”