For Mark Constantine, cofounder and chief executive officer of Lush, business and pleasure often go hand-in-hand.

“I actually have my interests, after which I assume that I can’t bring all of them to my work,” he said. But an effort to impress his wife spun his love of botany — an inspiration for the creation of Lush — into birding.

“I used to be 19, with my wife, and he or she was into birds,” Constantine said. “We were mainly keen on botany, that was my first interest — useful plants for on a regular basis life, and clearly, I used to be very keen on using botanical things in products. Birding is far harder to do than botany because birds fly away, and you possibly can’t dig it up. They’re not something that stay still for very long.”

That love of birding — coupling an encyclopedic knowledge of avian species with a competitive edge for bird races — has led to his philanthropic endeavors as well. Constantine cofounded the Birds of Poole Harbour Charity within the U.K., which facilitates commission surveys and field trips, in addition to organising webcams for international enthusiasts to partake. He takes about 1,000 school-age children onto the harbor every winter and, in 2017, the charity partnered with the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation to bring osprey back to the region.

“There aren’t any ospreys in Europe — 200 years ago, there have been ospreys here, but not now,” Constantine said. “We began to see if we could introduce them to our harbor, and there was a chance for reintroducing seagulls on the Isle of Wight, which I believed was a beautiful idea.”

For his independent publishing house called The Sound Approach, which recurrently publishes books on bird songs in various international locales, he sends fellow enthusiasts off to countries from Turkey to Oman for research. “I’m just like the Victorian benefactor who sends people off, they usually come back with their findings, after which we write it up,” he said. “That’s just about my role.”

Recreationally, he’s also competed in several bird races. “For seven years, I got here to Latest Jersey and did the Latest Jersey bird race, where you compete with 60 to 70 other teams to see what number of birds you possibly can see and discover in a 24-hour period. I brought a team from Britain to compete,” he said.

Though holy grail sightings have eluded him, Constantine does have just a few favorites. “The various thrush — it’s a stunningly good looking bird,” he said. Other favorites include the Wilson’s plover and the Chuck-will’s-widow.

“I needed to learn all these recent birds; I became very keen on the way you learn bird sounds. I visited Cornell University, and saw the stunning work they were doing. I talked to all their scientists, who could pick the migrating birds at night from their calls, and I desired to have the ability to try this. It worked out fairly well for me,” he said. “I’m a competitive bloke.”