Learn-the-Birds

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Lauren James

Lauren James is a young South African botanist, passionate about the natural world and understanding how the interactions between organisms and their environment have produced the biodiversity we have today. Lauren started her university studies at Rhodes University where she obtained her BSc in botany and entomology, and Honours in botany. Here her botanical research focussed on pollination biology, leading to her studying bird-pollination, specifically, how different plant species are adapted to be pollinated by different types of birds. After completing her Honours degree, Lauren was selected for an internship at the Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens in Cape Town. This grew her interest in taxonomy and systematics and led to her persuading her Masters degree at the University of Cape Town, where she is studying the systematics and evolutionary ecology of daisies in the genus Osteospermum L. (Asteraceae). Though particularly inspired by the rich floral diversity of South Africa, Lauren has great interest in all aspects of the natural world and is keen to learn more about birds.
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Dr. Melissa Whitecross

Dr Melissa Whitecross is BirdLife South Africa’s Landscape Conservation Programme Manager and is responsible for coordinating this environmental NGO’s threatened and endemic terrestrial sites and species conservation work. Melissa previously worked as the Raptor & Large Terrestrial Bird Project Manager where she coordinated projects on species such as the Endangered Secretarybird. Melissa holds a PhD in environmental science from Wits University. Melissa is the founder and host of BirdLife South Africa's Conservation Conversations weekly webinar series. Melissa has been awarded the Leslie Brown Memorial Grant from the Raptor Research Foundation, an IUCN SOS Rapid Response Grant for Blue Swallow Conservation and a Nedbank Green Trust Grant for ‘Recognising, assessing and reporting on OECMs in the Western Cape’. Melissa spends much of her free time travelling around South Africa exploring and photographing the country’s natural biodiversity (Instagram: @melissaw27). Melissa is also a keen birder having seen 768 different bird species within southern Africa so far.
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Prof Adrian Craig

Adrian Craig is a retired professor of zoology, who spent his working career lecturing at Rhodes University in South Africa. He has also given many talks to school groups and other audiences. His research has always focused on African birds, involving field studies, museum specimens, and historical records. Apart from formal scientific publications, Adrian has written many popular articles for birdclub magazines, and contributed to handbooks such as “The birds of Africa” and “Handbook of the birds of the world”.

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Rita Fortuna

Rita is a behavioural and evolutionary ecologist from Portugal. She studied Biology at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (Portugal) and joined The Sociable Weaver Project as a Master student in 2015. After graduating, Rita worked for 3 months as a field assistant on a project on Iberian magpies in Spain, after which she obtained a PhD scholarship to keep studying the behaviour and ecology of sociable weavers. Rita has therefore been working with the Sociable Weaver Project for over 6 years. Her research is focused on maternal reproductive strategies and how these vary according to ecological and social factors, as well as on better understanding cooperative care rules and offspring survival benefits in the presence of helpers. Broadly, she’s keen on understanding how animals, preferably birds, behave and adapt as their environment varies.
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Dr Derek W. Keats

Derek was biology professor for over 20 years, and discovered several species new to science (not birds, alas), and even has a species named after him. His studies have encompassed ecology, systematics and phylogeny, as well as technology in education. He has published around 80 academic papers, and more than 100 magazine articles in which he has brought science and nature to lay persons. He has also been a university Deputy Vice Chancellor, held various technology roles in university and business, and is a technology geek. Derek is an accomplished nature photographer on land and under water, with his photos appearing in over 20 books, hundreds of magazines, several mobile apps, and museum exhibits. Today he works in FinTech, but prefers to spend time photographing birds  and unravelling their stories so he can re-tell them to humans. He is co-founder and looks after the technology and arrangements for Learn-the-Birds.
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Paul Turyagumanawe

Paul Turyagumanawe is a Lawyer by profession and a Tour Guide by Occupation. He specializes in the Range-Restricted Highland birds of the Albertine Rift. For six years, he has been guiding tours in Uganda, Rwanda & Eastern Congo, and currently runs Safari Support Services Limited. He's also a Certified Tour Guide instructor with the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT), and a pioneer facilitator of the Ukarimu Curriculum . He believes that every guide needs to know the birds, especially if you guide tourists in a country such as Uganda. During the COVID-19 break, Paul started working on a book on Bird Behaviour. In actual sense, the book was working on him, turning him into a passionate naturalist. He soon discovered that birding is the most underrated tool for turning men & women, and especially young people, into conservationists. Together with a few friends, they have started the Uganda Avian Conservation Society.
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Faraaz Abdool

Faraaz Abdool is an internationally published freelance conservation and wildlife photographer/writer who specializes in birds and the issues they face worldwide. He graciously serves on the Trinidad and Tobago Bird Status and Distribution Committee (formerly the Trinidad and Tobago Rare Bird Committee), and leads birding trips on both islands. Faraaz also runs yearly birding and wildlife tours to East Africa. Faraaz is also the author of “Casual Birding in Trinidad & Tobago”, an extensive volume designed to market T&T as an attractive and easy birding destination as well as to educate the local population about their avian cohabitants. Faraaz cultivates wildlife consciousness via his words and images, in a last-ditch attempt to reconnect humans with nature and save the world.
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Etienne Marais

Etienne is one of South Africa's most experienced birders, a veteran guide and has been training birders for 15 years in an array of skills and specialities. He thinks deeply about the experience of birding.
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Dr Dayo Osinubi

Dr Dayo Osinubi Dr Dayo Osinubi is an avian behavioural ecologist who enjoys exploring the "how" and "why" questions in nature. He started his career in Nigeria and considers himself fortunate to continue travelling the world learning about birds. His academic background includes a postdoc at the Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology in Cape Town, South Africa; a PhD from the School of Biological Sciences in Christchurch, New Zealand; a MSc from the AP Leventis Ornithological Research Institute in Jos, Nigeria. He has worked in various capacities of conservation research, management and policy with BirdLife International, Nigerian Conservation Foundation, Royal Society for the Conservation of Birds, Fauna and Floral International, UN Convention on Migratory Species, and also enjoys time on cruise ships as an expedition lecturer. He currently lives far away from the tropical warmth of his African birth, up in Canada's Yukon Territory.

Some websites

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Dr Krista Oswald

Despite noKrista Oswaldt necessarily being a birder (I didn’t even own proper binoculars), I completed an Honours BSc studying Tree Swallows through Dalhousie University in Canada, and an internship with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Life was leading me down the ornithological path, and I wasn’t exactly upset about the idea. In January 2015 my flight from Canada to South Africa landed in Port Elizabeth, where I would live for the next 5 years. Except, I actually spent more than two of those years in the Cape Fold Mountains and their fynbos biome, following and learning about Cape Rockjumpers. My research resulted in an MSc (Nelson Mandela University) and a PhD (Rhodes University), but most importantly an infatuation with my study species that I doubt will ever truly disappear. I am now studying birds in the Negev desert of Israel, and doing my best to find an excuse/time/money to go back to the Fynbos and see the worlds best birds.
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Abia Atukwatse

Abia Atukwatse Abia is a female Nature guide in Uganda specializing in birds and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Science, Technology and Management. She is passionate about a healthy environment as well as changing lives for the better. Abia is the current secretary to the Uganda Women Birders and has been bird watching since childhoo d but took it as a career in May 2014 during her internship in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, one of the best birding destinations in Africa. This was a life changer for her and all her decisions followed the avian path ever since. She volunteered as a guide in Uganda Wildlife Authority attached to Queen Elizabeth National park(2016) as a means to advance her skills in birding, started volunteering in Nature Uganda (Birdlife partner in Uganda) specifically in Bird Population Monitoring and Waterfowl Counts from 2016 to date and did her first birding safari in December 2016. Abia works with Bird Uganda safaris as a bird guide and formerly an operations officer for the Uganda Women Birders’ project. She currently runs as a freelance guide and a proprietor of the young Egret Gorilla Safaris, a company she co-found to offer opportunity to other girls in the industry. Abia is a member of Nature Uganda, Uganda Safari Guides Association and Uganda Bird Guides Club. She is an outgoing person, always happy and has a very developed sense of humor.
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Judith Mirembe

Judith with shoebill Judith is a well-trained bird guide and the chairperson of the Uganda Women Birders, an initiative to increase the number of women in nature guiding, specifically bird watching - a male-dominated profession. She has been bird watching since her early ages and started leading bird watching tours in 2017 and is among the few women leading these tours in Uganda. She holds an Msc in Environment and Natural Resources from Makerere University. Judith is passionate about research, conservation and the general environment, an area she has worked in since 2016. She developed the passion in research as she worked as a Bird Population Monitoring Coordinator (2016-2018) with Nature Uganda, a Birdlife partner in Uganda. She is an Alumnus of the Tropical Biology Association (TBA) and the EDGE Fellowship 2017-2019 (Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered Species) specifically doing research on the Shoebill. Away from bird watching she is a hockey player and loves family.
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