Sunbird Tours

Sunbird Leaders
	Ignacio Areta was raised in the northern Patagonia city of Neuquén, Argentina. A passionate sound recorder since 1999, he has obtained a wealth of recordings of birds from Argentina that will soon be published in a DVD of birdsongs of the southern cone of South America. Nacho (as he's known) holds a degree in biology (Universidad Nacional de La Plata) and is finishing his PhD on the evolution of the seedeaters in the Capuchinos group - a topic that fuses his interests in natural history, evolution, and conservation. Deeply concerned about natural and cultural conservation, Nacho has worked extensively in a project on the sustainable use and conservation of the Turquoise-fronted Parrot in the Chaco region (Proyecto Elé) and is part of a project working to conserve the Atlantic Para Pine forest in Misiones province (Proyecto Pino Paraná). Nacho has been working as a guide for two years throughout South America, from Argentina’s northern Puna plateau to the southern sub-Antarctic forests of Tierra del Fuego.
	Gavin Bieber is a WINGS staff leader who was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia but grew up in British Columbia, Virginia Beach, Great Britain and Denmark. Gavin graduated from the University of Victoria with a degree in Biology and a minor in Environmental Studies. He studied for one year at the University of Southern Mississippi where he collaborated with their Migratory Bird Study Group. While still in university he taught waterfowl, shorebird and passerine identification workshops for the Victoria Natural History Society and led fieldtrips for the university’s ornithology classes. Since graduating, Gavin has worked as a field assistant on a variety of ornithological research projects In addition he conducted point counts for the National Park Service in Arizona and New Mexico and assisted in setting up a riparian bird survey for the University of Arizona. He has traveled extensively through Western Europe, North and West Africa, Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Mexico, the U.S., Canada, and Alaska. Recently his interests have shifted to the neotropics, and he is very excited by the potential offered by his newly constructed tour to Panama.
	Tudor Blaj trained as a forestry engineer with a Master’s Degree in forestry, but after a few years working as a forest manager decided that guiding birdwatching tours around his home country was more fun than managing a couple of thousand hectares of forest. With an in-depth knowledge of his country and its wildlife he has co-lead our Romania tour for more than five years. History is one of his other passions and on the tours he leads for us participants will be offered not only a wealth of information about birds but also some fascinating background to his country.
	Bryan Bland is a Sunbird director who lives in Norfolk, alternating his highly regarded residential birdwatching courses with his overseas tours – a combined total of 1000 so far. He has studied birds in over 50 countries around the world and has been closely involved with the development of our successful 'Birds and Music' and 'Birds and History' tours (reflecting his other passions outside ornithology). Bryan's interest in identification is evinced by the fact that he has served on the records committees of both Norfolk and Scilly and has discovered numerous rarities, including county and country firsts. His papers and reviews have appeared in Birding World and British Birds. A busy lecturer, he is also well known as an illustrator.
	Dan Brown is a Sunbird staff leader and has life-long interest in natural history has led him to becoming a freelance ecologist. Having graduated from the University of East Anglia with an ecology degree Dan remained in Norwich where he now divides his time between undertaking seabird and cetacean surveys in the North Sea and the Bay of Biscay, birding trips abroad and tours for Sunbird. Before University he had already spent four months in the Antarctic, South Georgia and the Falklands and has also travelled widely through South America and Africa, as well as his favoured Europe where any form of wildlife is likely to grab his attention. When not nose-to-nose with some creature or other, Dan enjoys anything from illustration and sport, to food, wine and giving talks.
	Jim Brock lives in Tucson, Arizona. Jim has been studying Arizona's butterflies for 25 years. He is the co-author of Butterflies of Southeastern Arizona and specialises in their life histories. Currently he is working on field guides to butterflies and caterpillars of North America and surveying the butterflies of northern Mexico.
	Rod Cassidy was born in Durban and used to work at the Percy Fitzpatrick Ornithological Institute and Transvaal Museum where he researched birds and mammals. He has travelled extensively in Central America, Southeast Asia, and Antarctica and is a veteran bird tour leader of ten years, having led many bird tours in southern, central and eastern Africa.
	Richard Craik is originally from Chester and arrived in Vietnam in 1992, where he has been working in the tourism industry ever since. Before devoting himself full-time to organising birding tours Richard worked with several well-known travel companies in Vietnam most recently, as director of marketing for Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand for one of the region’s leading tour operators. Richard lives in Ho Chi Minh City with his wife, Lan, daughter Carmen, and a large collection of bird books. Away from birds Richard enjoys a game of tennis, listening to his Velvet Underground records and following the ups and downs of Everton Football Club.
	Fergus Crystal was born in Scotland but has been living abroad for most of his life, working with birds. After a spell in Israel bird ringing and monitoring Griffon Vultures, he worked in Kazakhstan on an Imperial Eagle study, and has recently lived for 4 years in the south of Japan where he studied Copper Pheasant and a range of migratory species in the southern islands. He has a great love for Japan and its birds and returns regularly to the archipelago. Fergus is also designing distribution maps for Helm´s forthcoming Field Guide to Eastern Palearctic Birds.
	Judy Davis has been leading bird tours for the past 15 years. Having spent months in South America (especially tropical rainforests) leading tours, working as a resident naturalist and guide at La Selva Lodge in Ecuador and at Explorer's Inn in Peru and engaging in volunteer projects and extended personal travel and birding, Judy considers the South American continent a second home. The southern seas are currently competing with the tropics as her interest in pelagic birds has increased following tours to Antarctica, pelagic birding trips in Australia and New Zealand, and a recent cruise from Argentina to Great Britain. In addition to leading tours to Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Antarctica, Judy has also led tours to Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Kenya, and Madagascar.
	Nikolay Dilchev is one of Bulgaria's most active birdwatchers. He runs his own tour company offering professionally organised birdwatching tours in Bulgaria. A graduate of Sofia University, where he specialised in ornithology, he is the author of several environment-related research papers and a founder member of the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds.
	Jon Dunn is a WINGS director from California. He has extensive knowledge of the identification and distribution of North American birds and is also very interested in Asian avifaunas, having led a number of tours in the region during the last ten years. Jon was chief consultant to the National Geographic Society's Field Guide to the Birds of North America. He is co-author of Birds of Southern California: Status and Distribution and A Field Guide to Warblers of North America. Jon is currently a member of the American Birding Association's Board of Directors and is one of the consultants for their magazine, Birding.
	Stuart Elsom lives in Cambridgeshire, where he is a Business Manager in Regional Government. His passion for wildlife conservation has seen him serve on several environmental and conservation forums and is a former chairman of his local bird club. Stuart’s lifelong interest in birds and insects has led him throughout Europe, North Africa, North America, South Africa and South America, but his specialist knowledge is the birds and wildlife of Eastern Poland, an area he almost considers a second home. While birds are Stuart’s main focus he has always maintained an interest in insects, especially butterflies and moths. Stuart is a keen wildlife photographer and many images from his UK and world travels can be seen on his website www.stuartelsom.co.uk. His images have appeared in various birding journals, magazines, CD guides and books, and when not in the field Stuart gives lectures to local wildlife groups and societies.
	Brian Finch has lived in Nairobi for eighteen years, from where he leads birdwatching tours to a number of African countries and to Madagascar. Since being based in Kenya he has become one of the most skilful birdwatchers in the region and has added a number of species to the Kenyan list. His wide knowledge of, and great enthusiasm for, birds is apparent to all who travel with him. Bryan is a keen bird sound recordist and is about to publish a CD set of bird recordings from East Africa. He has also recently developed an enthusiastic interest in butterflies.
	David Fisher is a Sunbird director who lives in Sandy, Bedfordshire. For 19 years he was Managing Director of Sunbird, but retired from that position in 2002. David has led more than 150 tours to 30 countries on six continents. He has spent a total of more than two years in the field in South America and Australia and more than a year in Kenya. David is actively involved in a voluntary capacity with various ornithological bodies and is currently Chairman of the Neotropical Bird Club, Chairman of the East Afican Rarities Committee, Chairman of the Seychelles Birds Records Committee, and is a council member of the British Ornithologists' Club. He also edits the highly regarded Birdwatchers' Guides series of birding site guides. While David's primary focus is birds he is also very interested in mammals, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies and dragonflies, and enjoys sharing those groups with the participants on his tours as well.
	Amanda Holden will join Sunbird in 2008 as a co-leader on the Birds & Music tours. Although her area of expertise is music, she has been an amateur birder for many years. She started out as a professional piano accompanist and taught at the Guildhall School in London, but now works mainly as an opera translator and librettist. She is also the founder-editor of the Penguin Opera Guides. Amanda is now writing the libretto for a new opera scheduled for the Sydney Opera House in 2010.
	Paul Holt is a Sunbird staff leader who lives in Lancashire. His main interests are the species that turn up as British vagrants and the birds of China and the Indian subcontinent. Paul has also travelled extensively in Europe, Asia and throughout North America. He is particularly interested in bird vocalisations, is a keen sound recordist and has been involved with the production of all three of the recent field guides to the Indian subcontinent.
	Steve Howell is a WINGS staff leader, originally from Cardiff, who has spent most of the past 25 years travelling and birding throughout the Americas, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. He has spent about 10 years in the Neotropics and 3 years at sea observing birds and other wildlife throughout the world’s oceans. Steve has been leading WINGS tours for 20 years, particularly in Mexico and Chile, as well as various cruises. He has authored and co-authored several bird books, including A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America (1995), and Gulls of the Americas (2007). Now based in California near Point Reyes Bird Observatory, where he is a Research Associate, Steve is working with Will Russell and Ian Lewington on Rare Birds of North America. His interests beyond birds include tequila and chocolate.
	Rich Hoyer is a WINGS staff leader who has an interest in natural history evolved at an early age. He grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, and graduated in 1994 from Oregon State University with bachelor's degrees in Zoology and German. He led his first birdwatching field trip for a group of school children while he was still in high school, and has been guiding birders ever since. He now lives in Tucson, Arizona.
	Yann Kolbeinsson lives in Reykjavik and is one of Iceland's leading birders. He has travelled widely in southern France (he is half-French) as well as various localities in North America (Arizona, California, Ohio, Quebec and Florids) and Southern Spain. Yann is particularly interested in wildfowl and waders which make up so much of Iceland's avifauna and is presently working on a M.Sc study on the ecology of Grey and Red-necked Phalaopes in Iceland. When not doing that he enjoys finding rarities and vagrants that stray to Iceland, his first being a Bohemian Waxwing in 1991.
	Victoria Kovshar is a Senior Researcher of the Laboratory of Ornithology at the Kazakhstan State University in Almaty. She has conducted research projects on many aspects of ornithology in Kazakstan. Victoria has travelled widely in her native country in search of birds and was for many years involved with the ringing project at the famous Chokpak ringing station.
	Paul Lehman lives at Cape May, New Jersey. He has written extensively about the distribution and identification of North American birds and was editor of the American Birding Association's magazine Birding for nine years. Formerly a lecturer in geography at the University of California, Paul now works full time as a freelance ornithologist.
	Ian Lewington is a freelance bird illustrator who lives in Oxfordshire. His illustrations have appeared in many books, notably The Rare Birds of Britain and Europe, The Handbook of Birds of the World, and Birds of the Western Palearctic. Ian is a member of the British Ornithologists' Union Records Committee, an identification consultant to Birding World, and a Museum consultant to British Birds. He has been County Bird Recorder for Oxfordshire since 1994. Ian has travelled widely throughout Europe, and to Israel, India, North America, and China.
	Richard Lewington lives in Oxfordshire where he works as a freelance illustrator, specialising in insects and other invertebrates. Among many other books, he has illustrated the recent Collins Field Guide to Butterflies of Britain and Europe, the award-winning Butterflies of Britain and Ireland, and the recently published Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Great Britain and Ireland. Richard's interests also extend to birds and other wildlife.
	James Lidster is a Sunbird staff leader who divides his time between England and the Netherlands when not leading tours. After studying Countryside Management at Humberside University he spent a season at Long Point Bird Observatory. Since then he has birded in Israel, Goa, Thailand, Florida and extensively throughout Europe as well as taking three trips to Beidaihe. He currently leads tours to Estonia, Spain, Bulgaria, Morocco and Iceland while his love of Asia is reflected in his very successful tour to Mongolia. In addition James has found a new obsession with West Africa and is now leading two two to Gambia and a new tour to Ghana. James also serves on the British Birds Rarities Committee and is learning more about photography, although he never wants to be a photographer, just a birder with a camera.
	Wichyanan "Jay" Limparungpatthanakij is a graduate of Wisconsin’s Burlington High School and the holder of a degree in Computer Science from Mahidol University and now devotes his skills to the study and conservation of Thailand’s incredibly varied ecosystems. He has conducted several English-speaking tours in search of Thailand’s rare and specialized birds, and was awarded first place for amateurs in the Bird Conservation Society’s 2000 Bird Race competition, followed the next year by a second-place finish in the professional category. Alongside his enthusiasm for wildlife of all kinds, Jay has always been passionate about the arts, particularly music and film.
	Narca Moore-Craig earned a B.A. in biology from the University of California, Riverside, where she was the first woman to win the Jaeger Award in Field Biology. She was also the first woman president of Western Field Ornithologists, and has served on the Arizona Bird Committee. For more than 20 years Narca has led natural history and birding tours to six continents, including five voyages to Antarctica. Her enthusiasm, passion, and breadth of knowledge are well known to those who’ve joined her tours, as is her delight in sharing adventures afield. She has guided for many nonprofit organizations, including World Wildlife Fund, the Smithsonian Institution, and Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Among her many interests as a birder are seabirds and the birds of oceanic islands. Narca is also well known as a wildlife artist and recent books she has illustrated include Raptors of North America, A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert, A Birder’s Guide to Southeast Arizona, A Birder’s Guide to the Rio Grande Valley, A Guide to Southern Arizona Bird Nests and Eggs, and A Guide to Birds of the Anza Borrego Desert. Narca lives with her husband, Alan Craig, in Portal, Arizona, in the shadow of the Chiricahua Mountains
	Killian Mullarney lives in Co. Wexford, Ireland. He is one of Europe's best-known bird-artists, especially since the recent publication of the highly acclaimed Collins Bird Guide which he co-authored with Lars Svensson, Dan Zetterstrom, and the late Peter Grant. His work also features in the latest revised edition of the National Geographic Guide to Birds of North America, as well as in an extensive series of definitive bird stamps for Ireland. Killian is a member of the Irish Rare Birds Committee, an identification consultant to Birding World, and an editorial advisor to Dutch Birding. Some of Killian's work can be seem on http://www.birdillustrators.co.uk
	Steve Rooke worked for the RSPB as a reserve warden for thirteen years before leaving to become a Sunbird staff leader. At one point he was leading up to 10 trips each year but since becoming the Managing Director of Sunbird he spends most of his time running the Sunbird office. However he still leads tours to his favourite destinations, currently Central Asia, South Africa and Ethiopia. He has a wide range of interests outside of birdwatching, not least of which is cooking.
	Gary Rosenberg is a WINGS staff leader and holds a Master's degree in ornithology from Louisiana State University. During his fieldwork, he participated in five expeditions to remote regions of Peru conducting studies on the distribution and behaviour of Amazonian and Andean birds. In addition to his experience in Peru, Gary has travelled throughout North and Central America and has spent over a year in Costa Rica. He lives in Arizona and is very involved with local ornithological activities.
	Will Russell is a Sunbird director who lives in Tucson, Arizona and is the Managing Director of our American associates, WINGS. His ornithological interests are varied and have included several years of teaching at college level and study on questions of identification, distribution and ecology. Will has travelled widely leading many tours over the last twenty-seven years.
	Stuart Tingley lives in New Brunswick, Canada where he formerly worked for the Canadian Wildlife Service conducting biological research and avifaunal surveys throughout the arctic and eastern Canada. Stu's ornithological interests span temperate regions of North and Central America and he is involved as a leader or consultant on all of Wings' Canadian tours. Stu has a keen interest in natural history and recently has found great delight in identifying and photographing butterflies and dragonflies, many of which are showcased at his web site (http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/tingley/).
	Antero Topp has been a bird enthusiast ever since he was 10 years old. After tradional bird trips in his school years, he developed an interest in ringing and in the work of bird observatories in particular. He has been on birding trips thoughout the world, both as a leader and travelling with friends. A naval architect by profession, he now divides his time between running a publishing company responsible for bird books and Alula magazine, and tour leading and is generally recognized as a leading expert on Estonia.
	Santiago Villa is a journalist by profession who worked for one of the biggest communication groups in Spain, before founding his own birdwatching tour company, Spainbirds, in 1999. Prior to that Santi worked part time guiding small groups of birders around Extremadura, Andalusia and Pyrenees and was also involved in various environmental education activities such as the Atlas of Nesting Birds in Spain. He is recently published books about the birds of Extremadura, illustrated with his own drawings, and a birdwatching guide to Central Spain.
	Barry Walker M.B.E, was born near Manchester, England and started bird watching at the age of 13. After birding extensively in Europe and the Middle East, Barry switched his attention to the neo-tropics and has extensive birding experience in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, and particularly Peru, Brazil and Bolivia. He has participated in numerous ornithological expeditions and contributed to many scientific and general publications concerning birds in Peru. Living in Cusco, Peru for 25 years, Barry has visited every corner of the country as a trekking guide, natural history guide and specifically as a bird tour leader, and he is the author of the well received book A Field Guide to the Birds of Machu Picchu and the Cuzco area, Peru. Barry is married with a 10 year-old daughter, and with his wife Rosario, is owner of Manu Expeditions a pioneer eco-tour operator in Manu specializing in birding, natural history, horse riding and cultural trips. Barry also occupies the post of British Consul in Cusco, and received an M.B.E in the Queens New Years Honors list 2004.
	Wang Qingyu was born in Xining, capital of Qinghai Province, the northern part of the Tibetan Plateau, and now lives in Beijing with her daughter. Qingyu worked in the travel industry for almost 20 years and has operated her own company since 2001. She has been arranging bird watching tours for over a decade and has traveled extensively within China. She now organizes and accompanies all Sunbird tours to the Middle Kingdom, and her skillful handling of our ground arrangements has contributed significantly to the success of these events.
	Deepal Warakagoda lives in Sri Lanka where runs The Bird and Wildlife Team who are our ground agents on the island. Sunbird has been working with Deepal since our very first tour in 1996 and he is one of the most active birdwatchers in Sri Lanka, is joint editor of the Ceylon Bird Club bulletin, and has recently discovered a new species of owl - the first new Sri Lankan bird for 132 years. He has also found numerous 'first records' for Sri Lanka.
	Chris Wood is a WINGS staff leader who is a graduate of Indiana University and balances his time between tour leading and research at the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. He is proficient in Spanish, having spent five months studying birds in Costa Rica and birding elsewhere in Latin America. Chris is a member of the Colorado Bird Records Committee.
	Rick Wright lives in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife, Alison Beringer. Rick grew up birding in southeast Nebraska and attended the University of Nebraska and Harvard Law School before taking the M.A. and Ph.D. at Princeton University. After a dozen years as an academic, he moved to Tucson in 2003, where he founded Aimophila Adventures, a guide service for birders in southeast Arizona. Now the Managing Director of WINGS, Rick is a widely published writer, a popular lecturer at birding events, and an enthusiastic tour leader in Europe and North America. His time afield is documented in his blog, Aimophila Adventures.