MARK AYRE lives on the southern South Island of New Zealand and has been a keen birder for most of his life. He is originally from the UK, where we worked as a warden on various bird reserves. Mark is very active in the local Royal Forest and Bird Protection Societies and is particularly invloved in the conservation management of the endangered Mohua (Yellowhead). When not taking bird tours or being involved in conservation work, Mark is invlolved with a yacht charter business. He has been leading bird tours for Mark Hanger of NatureQuest, New Zealand for many years and has led our tour for the past eight years.

MARTIN BENADIE was born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa, where his keen interest in birds began. After completing his degree in Financial Management he decided to follow his passion for birds. Martin has been involved in the avi-tourism industry since 2000, beginning as a local bird guide in the Nylsvlei Wetland Reserve (a RAMSAR Site) in South Africa moving to co-manage a private lodge in a large conservancy adjoining the Kruger National Park. He now consults as a specialist birding guide and is passionate about locating difficult-to-find species and localised endemics. He is a qualified THETA/FGASA Level 3 and SKS birding guide, resides in Cape Town and is an expert on the Western Cape. He is also an extremely capable African birder, and has led many birding tours in South/Central Africa and Madagascar.

SIMON BOYES  was brought up and learnt his birds in the Cotswolds. He graduated in Classics (helpful for scientific names of birds!) from Oxford University in 1974, and took his Master's Degree in Environmental Conservation in Edinburgh. Before leaving college he had already travelled round Kenyan and Tanzanian game parks, overland to India and round Scandinavia. In 1976 he worked for the RSPB as a summer warden on Fetlar and at Minsmere. In 1977 Ornitholidays invited him to co-lead a tour to the Seychelles, which turned out to be the first of many international tours. Since then he has become one of Ornitholidays' principal leaders and has now led over 290 tours to all seven continents. There can be few bird tour leaders in the world that rival Simon's knowledge of world birds. He is especially interested in bird-song and taxonomy and his other interests include swimming, snorkelling, wildlife gardening, cricket and playing the mandolin. He lives with his family in the Welsh borders.

MARK BRAZIL is undoubtedly the leading British ornithologist in Japan where he lives in the country's most northerly island, Hokkaido and was, until recently, Professor of Biodiversity and Conservation at Rakuno Gakuen University. He was educated at Keele and Stirling Universities and earned his PhD for work on avian ecology and behaviour in Iceland. His work, involving ornithological research and guiding TV naturalists and wildlife photographers has taken him to all continents. A regular contributor to BBC Wildlife, Mark is also author of several books including A Field Guide to the Birds of East Asia, The Birds of Japan and is a regular columnist in The Japan Times.

COLIN BUSHELL is a principal leader for Ornitholidays and tour manager of Toucan Birding Tours and has been a birdwatcher for over 30 years. Birding has taken Colin to many different parts of the world & throughout Europe and North Africa, Gambia, Thailand, India and Nepal: but it is the Neotropics that hold a particular fascination for him. Travels over the last decade have taken him to Chile, Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and many trips to his favourite country, Peru. Colin has visited Manu and the north of Peru on many occasions. He is an enthusiastic student of bird vocalisation - a very useful skill in the tropical Americas where bird diversity is immense.

TREVOR CODLIN  is an ecological consultant and is one of the leading exponents of digiscoping - using a telescope to take digital photos. During the past few years he has led a number of tours within Europe and was a very popular leader on our recent spring tour to Spain.

RICHARD COOMBER  has been associated with Ornitholidays for over 40 years as in 1968, as a young bank clerk on the Isles of Scilly, he showed Lawrence Holloway and one of our early groups to the islands an Upland Sandpiper that he had discovered on St. Mary's. By 1974 he had given up banking to run a guesthouse on the Isle of Mull, where in 1976 he hosted our first tour to the island. On moving back to the south in the 1980s he joined the Ornitholidays team and has now led over 210 tours covering all seven continents, visiting over 50 countries watching birds and wildlife. He is a past winner of the Dusk to Dawn section of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and willingly shares his knowledge of digital photography with clients on tour. In addition to birds and photography he is interested in other aspects of wildlife, especially flora, butterflies and moths. When not on tour he gives illustrated talks to RSPB and other groups. He now lives near the New Forest in Hampshire where he is an active member of the Hampshire Moth Group.

ENRIQUE COUVÉ   is an Industrial Design Engineer by profession, but a naturalist at heart and has been birdwatching for more than 40 years. He is extremely knowledgeable about Chilean birds, having travelled from the High Andes in northern Chile to the frozen Antarctic seas. He is extremely skilled in finding and identifying birds in the field. Enrique is also the main author of the forthcoming book entitled Field Guide to the Birds of Chile and also author of Birds of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and Antarctic Peninsula. He is an excellent nature photographer, having one of the most complete photographic collections of Chile's birds and other wildlife. He is a partner and Director of Fantastico Sur and lives in Punta Arenas with his wife Cecilia and their four children.

IAN DAVIDSON  was born in Johannesburg and apart from a few years spent training as an entomologist in the Natural History museum in London he has lived in South Africa. After returning to South Africa he was offered a post as an entomologist with the South African Institute for Medical Research (SAIMR) culminating in the conferring of a Master's degree in Medical Entomology. Since 1988 he has travelled fairly extensively as a specialist birder and natural history guide. Africa is his main area of expertise, but he has travelled extensively in the USA, South America, Europe and the Middle East. While his primary interest is birds, he has a broad knowledge in the entomological, botanical and general zoological fields. His publications include Southern African Birds - a photographic guide co-authored with Ian Sinclair, and a multi-lingual guide Birds of the National Parks of South Africa.

MARIANA DELPORT  has made a study of the natural history of the Western Cape and is a member of the Cape Bird Club, Tygerberg Bird Club, BirdLife SA, the Botanical Society of SA, the Indigenous Bulb Society of SA and Field Guides' Association of SA.  During her five years as chairperson of the Tygerberg Bird Club she has organised and led many birding outings, most of which ended up as natural history outings as many of her birding friends share her passion for nature.  She says that becoming a qualified cultural and nature guide was the best thing that has happened to her, as nothing makes her more happy than sharing her passion with visitors to South Africa. She was the co-leader for our recent Birds & Wine tour.

NIKOLAY DILCHEV  lives in Sofia and is the most experienced bird tour leader in Bulgaria. He is a founder member of the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds. As well as being a keen photographer, he is also a regular contributor of articles for ecology and conservation papers in Bulgaria. He has been leading our Bulgaria tours for the last 10 years, and has been an outstanding hit with our clients!

TIM FISHER was born in England, and has been actively interested in birds since he was nine years old. After qualifying with a degree in Applied Biology and as a chartered accountant, he left England in 1974 and worked in Hong Kong, Japan and Fiji and finally in the Philippines. In 1984, he decided to stay in the Philippines and pursue his own activities. During these years, he actively birded in each country and elsewhere in Asia, finally becoming a specialist in Philippine Birds. He led his first birding watching tour in 1990 and as the years went by this activity took up more and more of his time. Several years ago, he and others set up Philippine Nature Tours Inc, a Philippine registered company that acts as ground agent for foreign groups. He is also was co-author of the Guide to the Birds of the Philippines and author of the Photographic Guide to the Birds of the Philippines.

ANDY JONES is now resident in Iceland but was previously a warden on Skomer Island, a ranger with the Pembrokeshire National Park, the RSPB's senior investigator officer and a Wildlife Trust director. A trained geologist he guides wildlife holidays all over the world. He regularly writes, lectures and broadcasts on wildlife and conservation topics and has proved to be a very popular leader on our Iceland holidays.

NIGEL JONES  is the Managing Director of Ornitholidays. His interest in birds and natural history led to a degree in Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia, then to employment as Assistant Warden on Fair Isle in the Shetlands and as an ornithologist working in the Camargue, France. Subsequent posts in teaching and research have finally culminated in his position running Ornitholidays since 1990. He  has has travelled extensively to all seven continents in search of birds. His interest in other aspects of natural history has been reflected in his establishing Quest for Nature, an internet based operation which offers general tours for wildlife.

DAVID KUHN lives on Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. He has been leading wildlife tours for over 30 years, with an interest in birds stemming from his youth in rural California. He began his leading career in his beloved Sierra Nevada, he has since led trips to other parts of North America as well as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Fiji, and has travelled widely in the Neotropics. Drawn to Hawaii's endemic avifauna, he moved to Kokee on Kauai in 1989 and has since been guiding visiting birders throughout the Hawaiian archipelago. David is an avid sound recordist with a special focus on vocalizations of the forest endemics and the mountain-nesting seabirds. His Hawaiian birding tours are influenced by his active interest in conservation and environmental education.

ROGER LAWRENCE has been a passionate birder for all of his life. For over 40 years he has birdwatched in East Kent and has been a member of the Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory since the early 1960's. Roger has been chairman of the Observatory and has ringed birds for over 30 years. Before retiring as Deputy Head of a London Secondary School, he taught geography and geology for 36 years. His birdwatching experience extends from the United States and Venezuela to Iceland, West Africa, India, Thailand and most of Europe. He is also interested in ecology and is a keen gardener and botanist. He now lives in Sandwich, Kent.

PETER LAWSON  was born in South Africa and has been fascinated with birds since his early childhood. He has led bird-watching, photographic and wildlife tours since 1983 and has travelled and bird-watched throughout the sub-continent, in the process building up a wealth of knowledge regarding the region's avifauna and wildlife.  He has a remarkable ability to share this knowledge and enjoys a reputation as one of Southern Africa's most experienced professional guides. In particular he likes to share his bird-finding and identification skills with foreign birders and beginners, but is equally at ease with those more familiar with African birds.His encyclopaedic knowledge of the area and birdlife, coupled with his wry sense of humour make him an ideal choice for co-leading our tours in Southern Africa.

LEON MARAIS  was born and raised in South Africa and is a THETA/FGASA (Level 3) Specialist Guide. He studied for a Postgraduate Degree at the University of Natal and then began his guiding career in the safari industry, spending around six years guiding at various game reserves in South Africa, where he developed a special fondness for African mammals and the predators in particular. He was introduced to the pleasures of birdwatching by his grandfather and has been looking at birds through binoculars since he was but knee-high to a Marabou Stork.

JUN MATSUI has always been interested in wildlife and started bird guiding in 1993 when he worked as a volunteer ranger at the Hikarigaoka Nature Park in Tokyo, Japan. After working for the Japanese Environment Agency he first arrived in Australia in 1999. He spent a year traveling around and volunteering at various bird hotspots, including Broome Bird Observatory and eventually took a job as a specialist bird tour guide for inbound Japanese groups, based in the tropical Far North Queensland town of Cairns. He has been involved in several bird publications and is the author of the soon to be released Japanese language field guide to the birds and wildlife of the Cairns/Atherton Tablelands area. Jun joined Sicklebill Safaris in 2007.

FRANK McCLINTOCK  was born in Africa and educated in England. He emigrated to Portugal 20 years ago and bought some scrubland and a few ruins overlooking a vast, man-made lake. He has turned this property into Paradise in Portugal, a guest lodge, which, in addition to a view to die for, offers excellent eco-friendly accommodation. He has always had a passion for nature and has been a professional bird guide for over 10 years.

JONATHAN MEYRAV has more than fifteen years experience of birding in the deserts of southern Israel with an unequalled, comprehensive knowledge of Israel's flora, fauna and history.  He has worked with the Lotan Center for Birdwatching since 2001 and became the senior guide there in 2004. He has birdwatched in more than 25 countries through the world.

ROBERT NTAKOR was born and raised on a farm surrounded by rainforest near Kakum National Park in Ghana. He has spent almost all his life exploring the forest and has a passion for Ghana's wildlife and in particular its birds. His ability to spot and identify birds by song is unrivalled within Ghana.  Since 1995 Robert has worked with the Ghana Wildlife division as a wildlife guide and holds a diploma in tourism and has many years experience leading birdwatching tours.

BERT PALTHE is a long-standing registered guide and has many years of experience, both in tourism and wildlife conservation. After qualifying as a specialist in Nature Conservation, he went on to manage exclusive game reserves in the previous Eastern and Northern Transvaal. He is now a full time tour leader based in Cape Town. Bert has a passionate interest in wildlife, birds and nature conservation, and genuinely enjoys sharing his wealth of knowledge with others. He has led our Natural History tours to the Cape region for the past few years and he has proved very popular with our groups.

TONY PYM has worked with marine turtles in the tropics, filmed Polar Bears in the high Arctic for television, and researched birds and whales in the worlds oceans. He has led wildlife tours to more than 60 countries. Birds are his primary interest, seabirds in particular (he has seen more than 90% of the worlds species), closely followed by cetaceans. He has had papers and articles published in Europe, United States, Africa and Australasia. He was one of the team that had New Zealand Storm Petrel in the hand, the first for 150 years, and last year was on the successful Fiji Petrel Expedition where this critically endangered species was seen and photographed for the first time at sea. Tony is one of the worlds experts on seabirds and runs a website entitled Seabirds and Cetaceans. He has made many visits to the oceans having cruised extensively through the Atlantic and the Pacific, made numerous voyages into both Arctic and Antarctic waters, and has sailed many times in the Sea of Cortez, and also around the Galapagos Islands. Tony, an experienced tour leader with infectious enthusiasm, is a principal leader for Ornitholidays.

COLIN RICHARDSON  leads our spring and autumn Cyprus tours. He is a former architect, based in Dubai for 30 years and has written several Arabian bird guides and travelled extensively in the region, organising and leading tours to the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen and Bahrain. Colin has been leading tours in the Middle East for 15 years and has lived in Cyprus since 2002, where he compiles the Cyprus Bird Report and serves as Bird Recorder for BirdLife Cyprus. His enthusiasm for birds, coupled with a relaxed and friendly approach, will guarantee a great Cyprus experience.

PAUL ROGERS  has had a life-long interest in natural history, which is underlined by his qualifications in Ecology and Animal Behaviour gained at London University. He is a principal leader for Ornitholidays and has led over 200 tours. He now has the privilege of living at Shorelands on Anglesey, the former home of wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe. He is widely travelled in Europe, North America and Africa and lectures on ornithology, ecology and all aspects of natural history.

LUIS SEGURA is of Spanish and Scottish ancestry and his home land is Patagonia, where he spent most of his life. Luis started to work as a naturalist guide in 1982.   At age 20 Luis led his first group of foreign birders throughout Argentina and ever since he has been working as a tour leader for this kind of groups in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. In 1987, Luis decided to move back to his home town Puerto Madryn. Based here he continued working as an independent tour leader and locally as tour guide specialized in birding and nature tours. He also worked as an associate in a local nature tours company at the operations department until in 1997 he finally decided to start Seebirds a birding tours company focused on Patagonia. In 2000, together with Miguel Castelino he founded Birding Argentina/Trogon Tours. Luis has been working with Ornitholidays since 2000.

GABOR SIMAY has been interested in birds and nature conservation since his first years in primary school. During his studies at the University of Debrecen he deepened his knowledge on birds, carried out research on ground-nesting birds of the Hortobagy National Park, spending most of his time in the field. His favourite area is the Bihar Plain and the Hortobagy. In 2008 he started to work for the Hortobagy National Park as a full time warden in the Bihar Plain area. He is also a member of the Hungarian Rarity Committee. He frequently visits other parts of Hungary as well as many sites of the Carpathian Basin to study birds. As a keen birdwatcher and photographer, he has visited several different Western Palearctic countries (e.g. Turkey, Spain, Egypt, Jordan), as well as Namibia, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and India. He speaks perfect English and some German.

UTHAI TREESUCON  is undoubtedly the most experienced Thai birdwatcher. His knowledge of bird song and his use of tapes has helped our previous groups see many elusive species. He has led hundreds of birdwatching tours in his native Thailand in addition to the many tours he has led to Vietnam.

DAVID WALSH  lives in Suffolk and has been a keen birdwatcher for most of his life. Over the last few years he has led many tours to Europe, Africa and North America. His other interests include butterflies and dragonflies. David has proved very popular with Ornitholidays' clients on the tours he recently led to Morocco, Corsica and the Canary Islands.

DEEPAL WARAKAGODA  is one of Sri Lanka's top birdwatching tour guides and will be happy to show us virtually all of the country's endemic birds on our tour. He has been the leader on our last four tours to this country.

MIKE WITHERICK  is one of Ornitholidays' principal leaders, having taken early retirement from the University of Southampton, where he lectured on geography. Although particularly interested in the avifauna of the Western Palearctic, his record of leading over  200 tours has taken him to all seven continents. He served for 10 years on the Council of the RSPB and also completed a two-year term on the Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council. When not leading tours for Ornitholidays, he writes college textbooks.

DENNIS YONG  has been involved in the fauna and flora of Malaysia and its conservation since he left school. He spent many years doing field work on mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and plants with the University of Malay and WWF Malaysia. He started leading tours in 1974 and has gained the reputation as the finest field naturalist in Malaysia. His knowledge of the call and habits of Malaysian birds, and where to find them, is unequalled.