Learn-the-Birds

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Nicholas Newman

Nicholas Newman is a passionate and accomplished birder whose interest in birds and their behaviour was inspired by his father’s work in the field. At the helm of the Newman family business , Nick is committed to growing the community of birders via Kenneth Newman’s iconic stable of well-loved birding reference tools. With the mission to get more people into birding, Nicholas has recently launched Newman’s latest title Birds By Colour for the easy identification of birds. It is aimed at new & beginner birders, as well as anyone with a little more experience who struggle with bird identification. The hope of this book is to educate people on bird identification principles using colour, size shape and habitat. The book also hopes to educate people on how birds use their colour and the environmental challenges facing our beloved feathered friends.
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Laura Kammermeier

Laura is the Marketing Manager for Birds of the World at Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She is a birder keenly devoted to birds and nature conservation and has a broad background in citizen science, marketing, and communications in the nature and travel industry. She led two large citizen science projects, including Project FeederWatch in the early 2000s. After that, she built a freelance marketing business that served a broad array of conservation nonprofits and travel companies. She began travel writing in 2008 and had the pleasure of watching birds and meeting birders in a dozen countries - she published in magazines and on her own birding travel website that described the world’s best birding travel hotspots. She returned ‘home’ to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 2018 to again serve bird conservation by bringing Birds of the World to a growing network of scientists, birders, nonprofits, and academic libraries around the world. Laura focuses most of her free time at home watching birds and “rewilding” her land back to nature.
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Dr Derek Engelbrecht

Derek has always been passionate about the natural world, and this was nurtured by his parents, who always bought him animal books. After matriculating, he studied towards a BSc degree in Zoology and Botany at the then Rand Afrikaans University, followed by a BSc Honours in Zoology and an MSc in Zoology (Cum Laude). This was followed by a PhD in the conservation genetics of minnows in mountain streams.

Derek moved to Polokwane in 1992 when he assumed a position as a tutor in the Department of Physiology. In 2007 he switched his allegiance and joined the Department of Zoology at the University of Limpopo as an associate professor.

His research interests are varied, and he has supervised students in topics ranging from plant ecology to anatomy, but his main research focus and interest are birds, specifically larks. Beyond larks, he has published papers on a variety of other birds. He prides himself that he has the somewhat unique distinction of having published peer-reviewed scientific papers on all five vertebrate taxa: fish, frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals. To date, Derek has published 168 scientific and semi-scientific papers on various topics.

He serves on several national and international working groups for threatened taxa, such as the IUCN Hornbill Specialist Group, Southern Ground Hornbill Advisory Panel, Cape Parrot Action Group and Botha’s Lark Working Group. He is a registered A-class ringer with SAFRING and has ringed around 10 000 birds at the end of 2022. He is also the chairperson of the Limpopo Regional Bird Atlas committee and a longstanding member of Birdlife Polokwane where he serves on the club’s management committee. Derek is also on the editorial board of three scientific journals, Ostrich, Afrotropical Bird Biology, and Hornbill Natural History and Conservation, and is the co-editor of Birdlife Polokwane’s birding magazine, The Lark. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the 8th edition of Roberts Birds of Southern Africa, currently under revision in partnership with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Derek is a member of the E-birders, the winning team of the 2022 South African Birding Big Day, and also the current BBD record holders with 236 species recorded in 24 hours. In 2018, Derek was honoured by Birdlife South Africa when he received the Eagle-Owl Award for an Outstanding Contribution to the Conservation of Birds and Their Habitats.

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Adam Scott Kennedy

Birding since the age of four, Adam travelled extensively across the world from his family home in the UK in search of birds, animals, culture and amazing places. He took his first independent overseas trip at the age of 17 and hasn’t stopped since. He has led dedicated birding trips to New Zealand, Madagascar, Ecuador and the Galapagos, among many others. Having seen over a third of the world’s bird species, he now focuses his efforts in East Africa where he now resides. His favourite birds are trogons. He has produced five photographic field guides to the birds and animals of the Masai Mara, Serengeti, and Kenya’s Rift Valley. He currently uses a Canon R5 with Canon 100-500mm lens.
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Christa Rolls

Christa RollsChrista Rolls is an Avian Ecologist and Conservation Biologist who loves birds and connecting others with their passion for birding. She started her career in avian ecology in Southern Indiana in 2012, and since then has had the opportunity to work on various projects in the Pacific Northwest, Germany, and, currently, California monitoring bird populations and behavior to help inform management decisions. Christa is also on the Board of Directors for Ecostudies Institute, a non-profit organization based in the Pacific Northwest that conserves wildlife and their habitats through science, restoration, and outreach. Most recently, in September 2020, she founded Birding Tools and hosts the Birding Tools Podcast, which breaks down all aspects of beginning birding, from finding the right pair of binoculars to learning how to find birds in the field.
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