Learn-the-Birds

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Dr. Kelsey McCune

Kelsey McCune completed her PhD in animal behavior from the University of Washington in 2018. Her dissertation compared asocial California scrub-jays and social Mexican jays on social behavior, learning ability and personality traits. Currently, Kelsey is a postdoctoral scholar at UCSB, and part of the Grackle Project research group started by Dr. Corina Logan.
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Martim Melo

Martim MeloMartim Melo is an evolutionary biologist based at CIBIO (Research Centre in Biodiversity) and the Natural History and Science Museum, both from the University of Porto, and a research associate at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town. He is in the steering committee behind the recently created Gulf of Guinea Biodiversity Centre (https://gulfofguineabiodiversity.org). Martim is interested in the processes generating diversity – from identifying the factors that drive population divergence to the evolution of reproductive isolation (speciation). Research has focused on the diversification of the bird fauna of Africa, and in particular in its oceanic and ecological islands – natural speciation centres that are amenable for the study of this complex process. The outputs of Martim's research feed directly into his long-standing and active interest in conservation, by providing a better understanding of the diversity patterns within centres of endemism. Martim is currently assisting in the development of education and capacity building programs in biodiversity hotspots – namely in the Gulf of Guinea and in Southern Africa, with special focus on Angola.
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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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Lynette Rudman

Lynette was a foundation phase and preschool teacher for 16 years. She currently writes, designs and creates fabric tactile books for blind preschool readers. Her book, Spider’s Web, won an international tactile book competition in 2009. She is passionate about education and teaching novice birders interesting facts about birds, interesting bird behaviour and bird vocalisations. She is an advocate for ethical birding practices and is not afraid to voice her opinion on this matter. In 2018 she received a merit award from the Grahamstown Rotary Club for her contribution to advancing birding in the Grahamstown area as well as the Eastern Cape Province. Having grown up on a farm and being close to nature all her life, she loves to share her passion for the natural world with others on the two Facebook groups that she created, Eastern Cape Birding and Southern African Bird Calls, and on her Youtube channel. Lynette is a keen photographer of wildlife, including birds, as well as macro photographing of insects and spiders.
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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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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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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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Rick Nuttall

Rick Nuttall has been sharing his knowledge and passion for birds with like-minded people from a young age. His MSc degree involved behaviour studies of waxbills and their close relatives (Estrildid finches). Rick joined the National Museum, Bloemfontein as Ornithologist in 1991, undertaking research for ten years before his appointment as Director, a position held until November 2017. Rick has authored scientific, semi-scientific and popular ornithological publications, and contributes regularly to national bird monitoring and citizen science projects. He has led small group birding trips in South Africa and Lesotho on occasion since 1993, and has travelled widely in Southern Africa; he now leads general nature and birding tours full time. An avid amateur photographer and sound recordist, Rick is fascinated by the natural sound environment, and always has his recording equipment at hand when he is out and about. He has been recording birds and their sounds since the early 1980s, and has a particular interest in vocal imitation or mimicry, an aspect of avian behaviour prevalent in a surprising number of bird species. Rick will join fellow sound recordist and birding enthusiast Lynette Rudman on 2 December 2021 in presenting a Learn The Birds webinar on the fascinating topic of avian vocal mimicry.
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Elizabeth Szekeres

Elizabeth SzekeresElizabeth Szekeres (pronounced Sek-e-resh, all of the e's are short) is a geographer with a Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies. Born in England, she grew up in Canada with parents who were great walkers and nature lovers. Elizabeth was a free-range child, living close to the north shore of Lake Ontario. Rattray Marsh, the last intact wetland in the Greater Toronto Area, was her playground. Since Elizabeth retired from full time work in 2017, she has spent a lot of time traveling the globe to explore the natural world and observe birds. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, she visited New Zealand, Southern Africa, Hungary, Spain, Ecuador, California, Oregon, The Galápagos Islands, Costa Rica, Newfoundland, Baja California, Mexico and the Sea of Cortez. Once lockdowns were over, she returned to travel, visiting Newfoundland, and then second visits to New Zealand and Costa Rica. She continued with Antarctica, Iceland, Greenland and Costa Rica again in 2023, and then Belize, Guatemala and southern Alberta in 2024. Elizabeth writes the newsletter for her local naturalists’ club and loves to share her stories and photographs of the birds she observes. She presents regularly for nature clubs and seniors' centres in the Greater Toronto Area, and has been a previous contributor to the Learn The Birds webinar series.
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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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Sascha Dueker

Sascha Dueker is a conservation biologist with a fascination for parrots ever since his childhood. He says “they are among birds what the primates are among mammals: highly intelligent and charismatic”. He began to focus on African parrot conservation 5 years ago with an African Grey Parrot Psittacus erithacus conservation project in SW Cameroon during his M.Sc. Right after finishing the project, he worked for the Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF) in the capacity as their Seychelles Black Parrot Coracopsis barklyi Conservation Officer. The foci of his work there were population estimates, breeding monitoring, and invasive species control. Originally from Germany, Sascha completed both his Bachelor of Science, Biology, and his Master of Science, Biodiversity and Conservation, at the Georg-August University in Göttingen with part of his studies at Université de La Réunion, France. He is based in Pretoria-Tshwane, South Africa, working for the World Parrot Trust as their lovebird conservation coordinator allowing him to navigate through conservation field work for lovebirds in sub-Sahara Africa.
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Noam Shany

Noam Shany is a passionate bird watcher who has traveled to more than 100 countries to assemble a world list that ranks among the top 25. He works as an consultant, specialized in development of rural communities with an emphasis on ecotourism and experiential tourism. He worked for many years with the government of Peru, and is the co-author of the first guide to the birds of Peru. Currently, he is running a project in Angola called "Betting on Avitourism" that includes the promotion of Angola as a birding destination, the creation of a birding route, and the training of local guides at the sites along that route.
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Dr Corwin Sullivan

Corwin Sullivan is a vertebrate palaeontologist with the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in nearby Wembley. His research interests centre on the diversity, functional morphology and evolution of dinosaurs and their close relatives. Much of the research currently being done in his lab focuses on the Cretaceous vertebrates of the northern Alberta and on the evolution of locomotion, feeding and respiration in various groups of dinosaurs, including the peculiar feathered dinosaurs known as birds.

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