Meet our Council of Trustees

Guiding our direction for the future

Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital Cornwall is led by a knowledgeable and engaged Council of Trustees, each of whom is committed to ensuring the future of the hospital is in safe hands and we are able to support every wild bird who needs our care.

Discover who is on our Council of Trustees and why they are the right person to support our vision.

Jeremy Whitaker

Chair

Jeremy is Chair of the Trustee Council and has lived in Cornwall for nearly 20 years. He has extensive board level experience as a statutory director within the rail industry and has served on the management board of Falmouth University. Jeremy is also a Director and Chair of the Community Rail Network Board.

He works as a consultant in the rail industry with clients across the UK and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Michael Larsen

Treasurer

Michael has been involved in finance for all of his career, most recently as a senior executive at Harbert Management, a US-based alternative investment firm. Previously he was with a Swiss investment firm in Geneva and spent 20 years globetrotting with Citibank / Citigroup. A Newlyn resident, Michael is vice-chair at Aspire Academy Trust, a large Cornish multi-academy trust, where he chairs the Finance, Audit and Remuneration Committees, and for more than 5 years was an appointed member of the DfE’s South-west Advisory Board (HTB).

Margaret Cass

From her arrival in Mousehole in 1963, Margaret always loved visiting the Hospital with her children. She became involved with fundraising as a volunteer before officially joining the council in the 1970’s. She was then elected chair from 1990 until her retirement in 2022 but is still actively involved.

Christine Trickey

Christine semi-retired to Cornwall in 2006 having worked in administration for Balfour Beatty for a number of years, and became a trustee for Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital shortly afterwards. She’s always been interested in birds and enjoys being part of a team with their welfare at heart. She has also served on the Mousehole carnival committee as secretary and is a volunteer gardener for the National Trust.

Robert Houghton

Bob has lived in mid Cornwall with his growing family since 1985. He runs his own management consultancy business working with a wide range of clients across the UK and Europe.  He enjoys the great outdoors, has walked the South West Coast Path and is an active volunteer in North Cornwall with the National Trust coast path team.

Sally Crabtree

Sally Crabtree was once a world class gymnast and is now a song-writing poet and children’s author. She is also the creative director of Artconnexion UK CIC – an organisation that devises and delivers award winning creative literacy projects internationally. Sally has always had a passion for song birds and is delighted to be working on a current Birds on the Branchline initiative which aims to celebrate and preserve the heritage of songbirds and their habitats along Cornwall’s Branchlines.

Jane Desmond

Jane semi retired and moved to Cornwall in 2021, she has extensive board level experience within the bus industry and later in her career went to work as Chief Operating Officer for a Social Enterprise. She still holds a Non Executive role for UNO Bus, a subsidiary of the University of Hertfordshire. 

Kate Jones

Kate worked in the television and film industry before moving down to Cornwall and opening an art gallery in Penzance. Gulls are a particular passion of hers and she helped out at the hospital during the busy season in 2022. She organised an art auction to raise much needed funds for the hospital in 2023 and finally agreed to join the trustees in 2024

Nigel Meyer

Company & Minute Secretary

Nigel graduated in Business and Information Technology in 1993. An early career was spent in technical, analytical and commercial roles in the technology sector before joining Hogg Robinson plc in 1997.  Recruited to bridge the gap between commercial, clients and technology Nigel progressed through many different leadership and board level roles, working and living in Europe, Asia, New Zealand and North America.  By 2018 Nigel was the Chief Operating Officer of a Financial Technology company under the Hogg Robinson Group and was Chief Information Officer overall. Hogg Robinson was sold in 2018 and Nigel joined American Express GBT where he worked on the integration of the travel business until the completion of that process in 2024.

He has recently relocated to Mousehole.

Fynn Stewart

Fynn is a veterinary surgeon and Clinical Director of Rosevean Veterinary Practice in Penzance. After graduating from the University of Bristol in 2011, he has worked in small animal practice across the UK, including in Kent and Surrey, as well as spending time travelling internationally.

Originally from Herefordshire, he moved to Cornwall in 2021 with his wife, who grew up near Marazion. Since settling in the area, he has worked closely with Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital and other local wildlife organisations, bringing his clinical insights and passion for animal welfare to the work of the board.

Our Charitable Objectives

We work with a dedicated and knowledgeable Council of Trustees, all of whom are devoted to securing the long-term future of Mousehole Wild Bird Hospital Cornwall as a charity and centre of excellence in the care of wild birds.

Here’s what we want to achieve within the next five years.

Veterinary excellence

To build our reputation as an organisation where our care is led by veterinary trained and advised people

Improving care outcomes

To monitor our treatment programmes and interventions with the objective to improve our capability, reach and impact in terms of the number of birds treated and survival rates by species

Volunteers

To establish a volunteer team to support the delivery of all aspects of our operation, ensuring funding is directed towards delivery of our core purpose of bird care

Funding diversity

To ensure that our day to day operations are financially secure, we plan to diversify and improve our fundraising capabilities, focused on memberships and specific fundraising campaigns. Our initial campaign will be in support of the refurbishment of the hospital site

Scientific knowledge

To promote study and research into the disease of wild birds and methods of prevention control or cure and into the treatment of injured birds and to publish the results of all such study and research.