Few people anywhere love birds more than Lira Valencia. Merely glimpsing the azure-blue flash of a Kingfisher flitting around her beloved corner of South London is enough to risk making her late for any engagement that day.
And yet, it’s a passion nested upon a barefaced lie.
Exasperated, like so many students, by the miserly state of the job market after graduating university during the pandemic, Valencia spotted a rare opening to put her zoology degree to good use in the field: a position with a bird charity in sunny Malta.
The problem? Eyeing London’s prodigious pigeon population marked the broad extent of her birdwatching pedigree. One pair of secondhand binoculars, a few trips around her local parks and a fib about her true level of birding experience later, she was taking flight to the Mediterranean.
“In my early 20s, if someone told me that I would be a bird watcher, I’d laugh b ecause it’s just not something I ever thought of growing up,” Valencia, 30, told CNN.
