TIME has flown by for former chip shop owner Brian Bailey as he celebrates 50 years of ringing birds for the British Trust for Ornithology.
The ex-BBC Radio Gloucestershire presenter has always loved the countryside and, as a younger man, decided he wanted to do something more scientific than just observing.
Placing a small ring around a bird's leg allows volunteers to track them and helps quantify the number and movement of bird species.
Since retiring, the Frampton-on-Severn resident has devoted as much as 20 to 30 hours a week to catching and ringing birds for the BTO.
He could not estimate how many birds he has ringed in the past half century but it would be in the thousands.
Most ringing has been within the Severn Vale but he has been to a number of islands off the coast of Wales in the Bristol Channel and even once in Majorca.
Brian said: "Birds ringed in the nest have a point of origin, which allows a glimpse of their entire life."
More than once birds have been found and tracked by volunteers as long as 20 years after initially being ringed thanks to the work of Brian and people like him.