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MARTIN BIRCH

Based in London, Martin has, literally, birded the world with experience from dozens of field trips across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

"Having worked with an international development agency my job took me to some of the best birding locations on the planet. When I am not overseas look out for the surfbirds baseball cap on the South Coast or, alternatively, to contact me via e-mail click here

ANDY BIRCH

I live in Los Angeles, California where I work for a film studio. My love of birds and bird illustration grew in my early teens when my first illustrations were published in British Birds. Since then, I have gone on to provide illustrations for a Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East and Rare Birds of Britain and Ireland.

I also have illustrated a number of identification articles including Pacific/Arctic Loon identification, Baltimore/Bullock Oriole identification and Grey headed Gull for both American and European magazines such as; Birding, British Birds, Birdwatching, Birdwatch, Birding World and Dutch Birding.

surfbirds AT surfbirds.com

CIN-TY LEE

Cin-Ty is a Phd student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. His fieldwork is based in Tanzania, South Africa, and southwestern U.S.

He began birding in southern California at the age of ten, and now spends his spare time writing bird articles and painting birds. He is rapidly becoming a familiar name on the American birding scene having recently published articles on ornithological topics as diverse as bird-finding in Taiwan and southern California, identification of Arctic/Pacific Loons and immature Bullock's/Baltimore Orioles, and local range expansions of breeding Barn Swallows in southern California.

His illustrations have appeared in Birding magazine and Western Birds.

ctlee AT rice.edu

GRAHAM ETHERINGTON

I am currently a PhD student studying in the field of Computational Molecular Biology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Apart from the PhD, my life is taken up by birding, playing football, watching football (Stoke City and England), and Snowboarding.

I started off life in the Royal Air Force, in which I completed 12 years service, moving on to University as a ‘mature’ student in 1995 (I use the term ‘mature’ very loosely!). Tours in the RAF took me to much of Europe, Newfoundland, Nevada, Belize, The Falkland Islands, Ascension Islands, Cyprus, Hong Kong, and Brunei, and I’ve also spent time birding in Romania, Morocco, Kenya, Israel, India, China, and particularly North America, where I have birded in 22 US States and 7 Canadian Provinces. Student life did not stop me from travelling, being selected to spend a year of my degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

As well as being interested in both the aesthetic appeal of birding and identification, I am also interested in the evolution and phylogeographics of birds, being particularly interested in how the Atlantic Ocean has influenced the evolution of Nearctic and Palearctic birds. I use much of my experience in this field writing for various journals such as Birding World, Birders Journal, and Ibis.

Favourite bird: Siberian Rubythroat
Favourite bird’s name: Fluffy-backed Tit-Babbler!
By the way, in the photo, I’m the one on the left!

etherington AT hotmail.com

BRIAN J SMALL

My interest in birds has almost become an all-consuming passion. Besides my family, cooking and running, and at the risk of seeming boring, it virtually runs my life and has done for the past eight years,

As an artist, I have always drawn birds. I have a pile of sketchbooks filled with the good and the bad, with common and rare birds, and with the carefully observed details that I draw upon time and again.

Currently, I am working on the illustrations for two books: a guide to the reed and bush warblers of the world, for Pica Press; and a field guide to the birds of north-east Africa, for Academic Press.

Besides the above, I have illustrated (and in some cases authored) a number papers on bird identification, including Red-footed Falcon, Cyprus Pied Wheatear, Spectacled Warbler and Ortolan/Cretzschmar’s Buntings. My work has appeared in ‘A field guide to the birds of the Middle East’ (Academic Press) and the ‘Concise Birds of the Western Palearctic’.

I seem to spend most of my time watching gulls at the local pig fields and estuary, and having tried to sort out Caspian Gulls, am now working on the plumage variation of Lesser Black-backed and Yellow-legged Gulls. Gulls are great to draw: they often stand still; are quite sculptural and chunky, giving me something ‘meaty’ to draw and yet subtle in plumage details; they are certainly a challenge and I feel that I am doing innovative work even on my local patch.

As I say I do have other interests, art, cooking, running, but these take second place to my wife, my son and my birding!

BrianJSmall AT aol.com