10,000 Birds Beat Writers
Here are all the amazing 10,000 Birds Beat Writers in alphabetical order by last name. If you don’t see a beat writer you are looking for here they might have left the blog in which case you will find them on the 10,000 Birds Writers Emeritus page.
………
Faraaz Abdool: Birding Trinidad and Tobago and Beyond
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.
Although he doesn’t keep a life list, Faraaz has been a keen birder for many years, separating Black and Turkey Vultures at a distance as a little boy, skipping class to gaze at Magnificent Frigatebirds as a teenager, and quitting his job as an electrical engineer to put all his energy into conservation as an adult. Faraaz cultivates wildlife consciousness via his words and images, in a last-ditch attempt to reconnect humans with nature and save the world.
…
Kendall Britt: Experiences of an Inexperienced Birder
Kendall lives in Central Texas and came to birding later in life, but she’s been making up for lost time ever since. She firmly believes that when we make the world a better place for birds, we make it better for people, too.
Inspired by Roger Tory Peterson, Kendall proudly claims Texas as the No. 1 bird state and spends her time chasing feathered wonders from the Rio Grande to the Panhandle. When she’s not outside with her binoculars, she’s at home writing about her adventures and advocating for birds.
…
Hannah Buschert: Adventures in Birding Here and There
Hannah Buschert started birding in college thanks to a required Biology of Birds course and a professor who included Sir David Attenborough’s Life of Birds to punctuate lessons. Almost as if by accident, Hannah landed the dream job of Park Ranger in the Rio Grande Valley at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, where she guided many birders who filled her head with far-off destinations and incredible birds. Consequently, her beat is Adventures in Birding Here and There.
Called home to the Oregon Coast to operate the family motel, in her free time Hannah leads Tufted Puffin walks and escapes to guide at birding festivals and explore the world as often as possible. Hannah is passionate about travel, tourism, and birding and hopes to inspire others through her podcasts: Hannah and Erik Go Birding, Women Birders (Happy Hour), and Bird Nerd Book Club.
…
Catherine Carroll: Lakes, Forests and Mountains
Cathy Carroll is a native Michigander, the Great Lakes state in the U.S., but became a birder in the Baltimore, Maryland, and Maryland’s Eastern Shore areas (the mid-Atlantic region) in the late 90’s. She was enticed by a birding friend to travel back to Michigan to see the Kirtland’s Warbler for her friend’s life list. She found the whole experience completely riveting and was hooked. Since that first experience, Cathy has seen Kirtland’s Warbler many times, each encounter as delightful as the first. In 2006, Cathy took the opportunity to take her first birding trip abroad – to Cuba – and she has traveled widely since then. On her recent trips to Finland and Norway and Puerto Rico, she learned that she was the least well-traveled, by far, birder on either trip. This is a humbling awareness. Her style of birding now is to select a few special birds each year and try to see them. This fuels her ongoing interest in birds and the unrelenting issues that threaten them.
…
Jason Crotty: General Birding and the Law
Jason is a birder, lawyer, and occasional writer currently living in Portland, Oregon with his wife and daughter. A Bay Area native, he started birding while working at a large law firm in San Francisco, but birds less frequently now that there’s a toddler around so he writes instead. He is particularly interested in the intersection of law and birding (especially the Endangered Species Act), other bird-related federal litigation, and the impact of federal public lands. He has also written about birding in Puerto Rico, which he believes is criminally underappreciated as a destination for birders. Jason’s writing has also appeared in BirdWatching, Birding, and Birder’s Guide, both online and in print.
…
Luca Feuerriegel: Essentially Europe
Family holidays to nature reserves and the abundance of nature books including bird guides at home paved the way for Luca Feuerriegel to be a committed birder by the time he was in his early teens. Growing up in Namibia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka provided the perfect setting for this interest. Luca recently completed his BSc in the Netherlands and currently spends his time working (and birding!) before starting his MSc.
…
Clive Finlayson: Avian Survivors
Growing up in Gibraltar, it is impossible not to notice large birds of prey, in the thousands, overhead. That, and his father’s influence, got Clive hooked on birds from a very young age. His passion for birds took him eventually to the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University where he read for a DPhil, working with swifts and pallid swifts. Publishing papers, articles, and books on birds aside, Clive is also a keen bird photographer. He started as a poor student with an old Zenit camera and a 400 mm lens; nowadays he works with a Nikon mirrorless system. Although his back garden is Gibraltar and the Strait of Gibraltar, Clive has an intimate knowledge of Iberian birds but his work also takes him much further afield, from Canada to Japan to Australia. He is the Director of the Gibraltar National Museum. Clive’s beat is “Avian Survivors”, the title of one of his books in which he describes the birds of the Palaearctic as survivors that pulled through several ice ages to reach us today.
…
Mark Gamin is a lawyer, writer, and editor. He became a birder at Antioch College, where he studied with the ornithologist Jim Howell, and first saw the secretive Virginia Rail. Physically Mark is a resident in Cleveland, but in his mind, he is often at his small farm in Appalachian Ohio, on the very edge of civilization.
…
John moved to Leicester in 1993 to start training as a mental health nurse and recently retired after 30-odd years in the NHS to start Shrike Birding Tours. His passion for birds extends into writing and using the power of words and birds to try and engage with people to enjoy the wildlife that is all around them and also to use this connection to nature as a way to improve their mental health.
…
Mary Alice Hayward: How Birding Feeds My Brain
Mary Alice Hayward never thought much about birds until after retiring in 2021 and waking up one spring day to a bird attacking her dining room windows. Curiosity led her to find out what it was: a Great Crested Flycatcher. With that, her eyes opened to discover and fall headfirst, deep down into the birding world. Mary Alice retired after nearly 30 years in the nuclear policy field and lives and birds on the Outer Banks barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean, North Carolina, USA. She is a passionate conservationist, artist, and mixologist. Mary Alice travels often and birds every day, no matter where she goes. Her favorite birds are the black and white ones.
…
Sara Jentsch: Annoying Woodpeckers and Beyond (and Other Tales by an Amateur Bird Watcher)
Sara is a German law student with a passion for writing, art, and nature. She also has a growing interest in birds, although she considers herself a newcomer to the field. Balancing her studies with creative pursuits, Sara finds inspiration in the outdoors and expresses her ideas through writing. She is committed to learning and creativity in all aspects of her life.
…
Kelly Isley: Field Notes, Feathers & Photography
Kelly Isley is an award-winning Southwest-based photographer known for her memorable, storytelling images. Her work has been featured in books, magazines, museums, and online publications, including Birds & Blooms, 10,000 Birds, Aviation Week, Arizona Highways, HD South, Blissful Birder, and GPEC.
Beyond the lens, Kelly is an aerospace engineer, passionate birder, board member of the Northern Arizona Audubon Society, writer for 10,000 Birds, and Field Editor with Birds & Blooms magazine. She lives in Arizona with her husband and two Yorkshire Terriers, working with clients and collaborating on projects worldwide.
…
Leslie Kinrys: Canadian Birder At Large
Leslie Kinrys has loved birds since her father put a House Sparrow fledgling in her young hands. She lives and birds in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with some trips farther afield. She enjoys seeing all species of birds, but her favorites are hummingbirds. Also, Leslie enjoys reading, listening to country music, getting together with friends, and rooting for her baseball team: the Toronto Blue Jays.
..
Paul Lewis moved from California to Mexico 36 years ago. He lived first in Mexicali, and now in the historic city of Morelia (about halfway between Guadalajara and Mexico City), where he and his wife pastor a small church. He is the author of an internationally distributed book in Spanish about family finances and has recorded four albums in Spanish of his own songs. But every Monday, he explores the wonderful habitats and birds found within an hour of his house, in sites that go from 3,000 to 10,000 feet of altitude.
…
Rolf Nessing: Birding in Germany and elsewhere
Rolf Nessing has been a voluntary bird ringing assistant in the field of scientific ringing since 1974. From 2000 onwards, he has held a ringing license from the Hiddensee Ringing Centre, Germany, and has been involved internationally in ringing in the following countries: 1997 Biological Station Rybachy (formerly Rossitten) near Kaliningrad/Russia; 2000 Israel and Palestine; 2001 the island of Comino off Malta; 2003 Titreyen Göl near Manavgat/Turkey; 2005 Fuentes de Nava, Spain. His naturalist activities have also taken him to Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway), the Balkans (Bulgaria, Romania), Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Armenia, Georgia), the Mediterranean, Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), Mongolia, the island of Socotra, Morocco, The Gambia, Senegal, and Australia.
Rolf Nessing has been a freelance environmental educationalist, trainer, and environmental lecturer since 1992. He is the founder and CEO of birdingBerlin (www.birdingberlin.com) and the travel company Vogelzug-Reisen (www.vogelzug-reisen.de ) and offers guided birding tours to many locations.
…
Peter Penning: Business Birding
Peter Penning is a sustainability management consultant who spends many weeks abroad, away from his homes in the Netherlands (work) and Portugal (holidays). Although work distracts him regularly from the observation of birds, he has managed to see a great many species regardless. He firmly believes in the necessity of birders to contribute to conservation. He passively supports BirdLife in the Netherlands and South Africa and actively in Portugal as treasurer of SPEA – Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves. Peter likes to meet people and have good after-birding lunches, which has seriously hampered his ability to build up a truly impressive life list. Somehow, he doesn’t care.
…
Kai Pflug: Bird Photography in China and Beyond
Kai has lived in Shanghai for 22 years. He only started birding after moving to China, so he is far more familiar with Chinese birds than the ones back in his native Germany. As a birder, he considers himself strictly average and tries to make up for it with photography, which he shares on a separate website. Alas, most of the photos are pretty average as well. He hopes that few clients of his consulting firm—focused on China’s chemical industry—ever find this blog, as it might raise questions about his professional priorities. Much of his time is spent either editing posts for 10,000 Birds or cleaning the litter boxes of his numerous indoor cats. He occasionally considers writing a piece comparing the two activities.
…
Sanjana grew up in Uganda and lived in South Africa, Malaysia, and the Netherlands before settling down in Melbourne, Australia. She’s a very new birder and got into it due to her partner’s influence. They often go looking for birds with their toddler, who corrects her when she misidentifies a bird call. Outside of enjoying birds, Sanjana works as a psychologist, writes about cooking, and anything else she can.
…
Fitzroy Rampersand: Bird Photography in the Americas and Beyond
Fitzroy, or Fitz as he is fondly calle,d began observing and photographing birds when the COVID-19 Pandemic forced border closures around the worl,d including Trinidad & Tobago, where he was vacationing at the time. Fitz used his free time to observe the many hummingbirds in his mother’s flower garden and soon, with the help of the internet, he was able to identify the various species. He started putting up homemade feeders to attract the hummingbirds. His interest soon grew to include other species of birds, developing a love for wildlife and especially bird photography.
…
Donna Lynn Schulman: Birding Book Reviews
Having been attached to books all her life, Donna Schulman is thrilled to be engaged in a passion that requires fealty to an information artifact called a “field guide.” Donna divides her birding time between Queens, NY, where she grew up, and central New Jersey, where she is on the faculty of a very large public university, and a volunteer with the Sandy Hook Bird Observatory of New Jersey Audubon. She was a Library Journal book reviewer for 15 years, reviewing over 100 titles, and has also reviewed birding books for the Queens County Bird Club’s News & Notes, which she formerly edited. When she is not birding or photographing dragonflies, or going to the theatre with her wonderful daughter, Donna travels to Florida, where she attempts to turn her young nephews into birders, and contemplates writing an article for her blog, Queensgirl.
…
Dragan Simic: Eastern Europe and Beyond
Now nearing 50 and duly lost in a midlife crisis, Dragan Simic took to birding rather late – only half a lifetime ago, after successfully testing his inadequate skills in other life-threatening activities, such as rock climbing and vertical caving. In the end, it was birding that took him from his native Serbia, across the Balkans and Turkey, to the very borders of the Old World: East Anglia and Spain, southern Africa, and India… Besides birds and traveling in search of them, Dragan likes a good beer and the croaky voice of Shane MacGowan, hates confinements of four walls, but prefers four wheels and a lot of elbow room around. Birder by passion and environmentalist by education, he is the co-author of three common birds guidebooks, the writer and the host of one TV film on birding for beginners, a field researcher, an ecotourism consultant, a bird blogger, and a guy who always thinks that birding must be better behind that next curve of the road and that the best bird ever is the – next lifer.
…
David Tomlinson: Birds and Brecks
David Tomlinson has been interested in birds for as long as he can remember and has been writing about them for almost as long. An annual highlight is hearing his first cuckoo of the year at home in Suffolk, England, which he rates as almost as exciting as watching White-necked Rockfowls in Ghana or Steller’s Eiders in North Norway. A former tour leader, he has seen an awful lot of birds around the world and wishes he could remember more of them.
As for the name of David’s beat, here is an explanation in his own words: “Brecks (Breckland) does need an explanation – it’s the name for the region on the Suffolk/Norfolk borders, renowned for its free-draining sandy soils. It has the closest to a Continental climate of anywhere in the UK. At its heart is Thetford Forest, which has the biggest population of nightjars of anywhere in the UK. The stone curlew is the other special bird of the region, again with the biggest population in the UK (over 250 pairs).”
…
Grace Waters: Birds and the Environment
Grace Waters is a Senior Editor and Writer at Environment.co. In her role, she guides environmental coverage across a range of topics, including renewable energy, biodiversity, climate adaptation, and green technology. She’s especially passionate about bird conservation and the habitats that support them, with a special interest in inspiring the next generation of birders. Her love of birds likely stems from her two pet parakeets, who keep her entertained at home. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her outdoors with binoculars in hand, observing the world around her.
…
Susan Wroble: KidLit Bird Books
Susan Wroble is a Denver-based children’s author with a focus on science-based stories. When she is not writing, you can find Susan trying to transform her yard into a native plant habitat or working at Colorado Children’s Hospital with the family’s therapy dog. She has a lifelong love of birds, perhaps instilled at birth with her middle name—Burd.
…
Erika is a writer, artist, and communications specialist living and birding in North Florida. Growing up in Maine, she spent summers swimming in chilly Atlantic Ocean waters, hiking fir-covered mountains, and rock-hopping within clear-running streams filled with trout. Quickly falling in love with the natural world, she has been hooked on outdoor exploration ever since. She has written for BirdWatching Daily, National Geographic Adventure, National Parks Traveler, the Maine Sportsman, the Florida Sportsman, and more. You can follow her outdoor adventures at @a_day_in_the_landscape on Instagram.
……
