Michael Mills

Michael Mills grew up in the Kalahari and Kruger National Parks, and it wasn’t long before the birding bug bit. After school he studied ornithology and conservation biology to masters level a the University of Cape Town’s Percy FitzPatrick Institute. Since then, for the past 20 years, he has been dividing his time between guiding birding tours all over the African region (working closely with Birding Africa), conducting bird research and conservation work, mostly in Angola, and, more recently, producing and publishing bird books, including the authoritative ‘The Birder’s Guide to Africa’ and ‘The Special Birds of Angola’. He now runs two conservation projects in Angola, working in close association with country’s top conservation NGO and under the auspices of The A. P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute. He is a dedicated bird sound recorder and has made nearly 10 000 African bird recordings, lodged with the British Library National Sound Archives and used by researchers around the world. He has also published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers on African birds. His favourite bird is Swierstra’s Francolin, a species which he was the first birder to ever see. He lives in Nelspruit with his family and enjoys birding in southern Kruger and surrounds, where his team broke the Birding Big Day record in 2020.