Ocean Adventures Staff Biographies
Mark Beaman
lives in Lancashire with his partner Hilary and daughter Rachel,
and is Managing Director of Birdquest/Ocean Adventures. After graduating
from Cambridge University he led an ornithological expedition to
Nepal and then spent several years studying seabirds at Aberdeen
University before creating Sunbird Holidays in 1978 for Executive
Travel and subsequently going on to found Birdquest in 1981. Mark
has travelled to every continent in search of birds and has a worldwide
interest in every aspect of birding, but it is the farthest flung
and most inaccessible reaches of the Palearctic region (where he
has travelled more extensively, and seen more species, than any
other ornithologist) that most excite his imagination. He is author
of The Handbook of Bird Identification for Europe and the Western
Palearctic (1998) and also author of Palearctic Birds: a Checklist
of the Birds of Europe, North Africa and Asia north of the foothills
of the Himalayas (1994).
Nik Borrow lives in London. As well as being a Birdquest
Senior Leader, Nik is also a major illustrator of the Birdquest
brochure. His formal Fine Art training was undertaken at Wimbledon
School of Art and subsequently he taught art for some years. Always
a keen birdwatcher, his two main interests finally merged when he
turned professional bird artist. An enthusiastic traveller, Nik’s
birding travels have taken him to Siberia, Mongolia, China, Tibet,
Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and North and South America, as
well as many areas in the Western Palearctic, but his major interest
is the birds of sub-Saharan Africa. He has travelled very extensively
throughout Africa, spending years in the field, and is co-author
and sole illustrator of the definitive Birds of Western Africa (2001).
Dave Farrow lives in Norwich with his partner Kumiko. He
cut his birding teeth amongst the woodlands and gravel pits of Hertfordshire,
but much of his adult life has been spent overseas. Dave has a special
love of Asia and North Africa, where his field experience now amounts
to quite a few years. A skilled and experienced tour leader, he
has escorted birding and adventure travel groups to over 20 different
countries, and is at home almost anywhere. His knowledge of Arabic
in particular has stood him in good stead when exploring the Yemen,
where he has even visited the southern governorates and Socotra
during OSME surveys.
Hannu Jännes lives near Helsinki with his partner
Jutta and sons Paavo and Aleksi. He originally set up the Earlybird
bird tour company together with Dick Forsman and still works as
a freelance ornithologist and sound recordist. Hannu is completely
fluent in English. Before starting to lead bird tours in the mid-1980s,
he spent four breeding seasons travelling all over the country collecting
data on the abundance and distribution of Finnish birds for the
University of Helsinki. He has a passion for bird identification,
especially warblers, and he has been a member of the Finnish Rarities
Committee since 1988. Hannu has already published two CDs of his
sound recordings, on the birds of Goa and southern India, and on
the flight calls of Palearctic migrants, and is now working on mammoth
projects for the Indian subcontinent and China. His expertise in
his native Scandinavia and adjacent Estonia is second to none, and
he has also travelled very extensively in the Indian subcontinent
and China, with eastern and southern Africa being added to his growing
repertoire more recently.
Linda Kilby Linda Kilby was born and bred
in Lancashire and joined the Birdquest/Ocean Adventures team in
1995 after a varied career including a spell as a gemmologist and
auctioneer. Her passion for literature led her to undertake an Open
University degree in Literature which she successfully completed
in 2001. When not keeping the ground side of our Birdquest tours
and all our Ocean Adventures arrangements in order (no mean task!),
Linda spends much of her spare time with her family, although her
two children have now flown the nest. She enjoys the outdoors and
walking. With more freedom beckoning, and Antarctica, Sri Lanka,
Kenya and Tanzania already under her belt, Linda is looking forward
to completing the set of continents and adding to her growing world
list!
Pete Morris lives in Lancashire with his partner Nina and
sons Jack and Josh, and is both a Birdquest/Ocean Adventures Senior
Leader and Deputy Manager of the Birdquest office. He has been birdwatching
for as long as he can remember, growing up on the North Kent Marshes
and at Dungeness. After graduating in Environmental Science at the
University of East Anglia in 1987 he spent a year working at English
Nature before taking off overseas. He lived for a time in Australia,
returning to Britain to work as an environmental consultant. Over
the past decade he has travelled very extensively in the Western
Palearctic, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australasia,
Southern Africa, Madagascar and South America. He has published
many articles and photographs from his travels, and also given a
number of illustrated talks at bird club meetings. Pete is senior
author of the well-received Birds of Madagascar: a photographic
guide (1998).
János Oláh lives in Debrecen, Hungary with
his partner Gabriella and daughter Enikö. A keen birder from
the age of 10, János (pronounced ‘Yanosh’) speaks
fluent English (his grasp of idiom is remarkable), has a degree
in Ecology from the University of Debrecen and is now doing post-graduate
research on the ecology of aquatic birds (especially shorebirds,
on which he has published a number of scientific papers). He is
currently working with Zoltán Ecsedi on a handbook to the
birds of the Hortobágy and is now embarked on a survey of
the entire Carpathian range. A member of the Hungarian rarities
committee and the operator of the Hungarian Birdline, János
is a highly accomplished bird tour leader who guides groups both
in his native Hungary (and adjacent Slovakia and Romania), where
his knowledge is unsurpassed, and across the globe. János
has now travelled very extensively in search of birds on six continents,
building up a remarkable expertise in a series of countries and
regions, and in particular Vietnam, Sumatra, Ethiopia and Ecuador.
Nigel Redman lives in Sussex with his partner Cheryle and
daughter Emily. He joined the Birdquest team so long ago that he
is virtually a founding member. After training as an accountant
he worked for a spell in publishing before taking a year off to
travel overland to Nepal. Later he became assistant bursar at an
independent school before joining Birdquest in 1984. He was one
of the founders of the Oriental Bird Club (and served two terms
as Chairman), is co-author (with Simon Harrap) of Birdwatching in
Britain: a site by site guide (1987), later republished in a revised
edition as Where to Watch Birds in Britain (2003). Nigel’s
birding travels have taken him to many parts of the world but his
main areas of interest are the Palearctic, sub-Saharan Africa and
in particular the Oriental region, where very few people can claim
to have such wide experience. Nigel has resumed a career in publishing
and is now responsible for the Christopher Helm, Pica Press and
Poyser imprints of A & C Black, but he still manages to escape
twice a year to lead tours.
Derek Scott lives with his partner Joanna on Dursey Island
off the southern Irish coast. Derek also works as an ornithologist/conservationist
on a consultancy basis for various international conservation bodies.
After growing up in northwest England and completing his DPhil on
Storm Petrels at Oxford University in 1970, he worked for six years
at the Department of the Environment in Iran, giving him an unrivalled
knowledge of the country, and since then has been involved in conservation
projects in many parts of the world. Much of his work has involved
wetland birds and their habitats (he has compiled inventories of
internationally important wetlands in Europe, North Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the Pacific), but he has also studied forest birds
in South America and once spent six months as resident naturalist
at the remote Explorer’s Inn in the Peruvian Amazon. His travels
have now taken him to over 120 countries and territories, covering
all seven continents, and in the process Derek has managed to amass
almost 7000 species on his life list! In 1998 Derek took a year
off from other work in order to see all the bird families of the
world in a single year with a birding friend, a feat that earned
the two of them a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
Mark Van Beirs lives with his partner Kathleen
and daughter Caroline near Ghent, Belgium and now has well over
100 bird tours to his credit. Born and raised in Ghent, he was soon
travelling abroad in search of birds, firstly all over Europe but
soon throughout the world. His varied career has included a spell
in a travel agency and fifteen months working as a naturalist guide
in the Galapagos and in the Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador. Mark’s
impressive fluency in six languages and invariably cheerful manner
allow him to travel with ease anywhere on earth and he has now visited
more than 80 countries! He has a wide-ranging knowledge of birds,
but he is particularly interested in the Neotropics, where he has
travelled very extensively indeed and spent many years in the field.
Africa, Indonesia, the Southwest Pacific and Mongolia are other
favourite areas, although in reality he now feels at home almost
anywhere. Mark has now observed more than 7200 species of birds,
but he also gets very excited about mammals and at night likes to
indulge in stargazing. 
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