This team of volunteers from all over Europe helps to keep Birdingplaces up and running. They review new areas, translate and edit texts and help to develop, improve and promote the website.
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Team Birdingplaces
Juan Gallego Zamorano
Juan is a Spanish birder and doctor in ecology. With his research, he tries to understand how different human pressures interact with each other to impact biodiversity worldwide. He believes that maps are one of the most powerful ways of visualizing and showing information. For him, Birdingplaces is a perfect example of that! Juan is not only an active birdwatcher, but also a birdringer.
Favourite bird: Peregrine Falcon
Anders Larsson
Anders is working as a teacher in history and philosophy in Skåne in the southern part of Sweden. He is a birder since childhood and is now a passionate local-birder in the surroundings of Klagshamn and is also participating in bird inventories . For him Birdingplaces is the perfect solution to the frustration of not knowing where to go birding when being abroad and a joyful way of sharing experiences from different birding sites.
Favourite bird: Golden Oriole
Louise Prévot
Louise is a bat ecologist based in the Netherlands. She is also a bird enthusiast and illustrator and loves to draw birds. She designed the Birdingplaces T-shirt that you can find in our webshop. Drawing birds is for Louise a perfect way to expand her knowledge about birds, and she keeps an eye out for them while exploring new areas. Louise thinks Birdingplaces is a great tool to share and keep track of her favourite spots and she loves to use this platform when travelling through Europe.
Favourite bird: Bearded Vulture
Bas Engels
Bas works as an ornithologist and ecological consultant in the Netherlands and (mainly) focuses on the impacts of wind farms on birds. In his spare time, he is an enthusiastic birder and often performs migration counts during spring and autumn migration. He thinks that, by using Birdingplaces, people can share their (local) knowledge about fantastic birding hotspots and let other birders experience these places as much as they do themselves.
Favourite bird: European Bee-eater
Massimo Grion
As a keen birder, bird photographer and avid explorer of new birding patches in his spare time, Massimo, based in NE Italy, has always been fascinated by bird migration, hence focusing his main activities on bird ringing and bird monitoring. The number of people visiting his bird-rich area he has met over the years has made him aware of the importance of acquiring essential, updated and precise information about where to go birding as well as of the value of providing it.
Favourite bird: Griffon Vulture
Thomas Büttel
Thomas is a German birder who got inspired by a German “Where to watch birds in”-guide, Thomas has spent a lot of time discovering the local birdlife of his home in SE-Germany. Finding it hopelessly underrepresented in birding terms. Therefore, he has tried to gather reliable information on good birding sites of his home for other birders on his website. Birdingplaces now allows all birders to share their knowledge and favourite birding sites.
Favourite bird: Ortolan Bunting
João Amado
João is a Portuguese birder and nature photographer with a passion for wildlife photography. He is always trying to improve his knowledge around birds and suppors local organizations in several activities like bird inventories.
Favourite bird: Common Kingfisher
Elodie Le Quellec
Elodie lives in France where she is working in a study bureau specializing in renewable energy and working on the impact of wind farms on birds and bats. She is specialized in birds but has also a broad knowledge of wildlife and ecological systems. Elodie is eager to make birdwatching more accessible to everybody as she enjoys learning new facts about bird species every day.
Favourite bird: Northern Gannet
Krzysztof Tokaj
Krzysztof lives in Poland and is professionally related to the financial services (POS terminals). Privately, he is avid cyclist, wanderer and, for several years, a bird watcher. Unfortunately, to this day he is unable to correctly recognize the individual species of sea gulls - although he tries very hard.
Favourite bird: Common Crane
Chris van der Heijden
Chris is a birder from The Netherlands and the founder of Birdingplaces. He came up with the idea for Birdingplaces during his birding travels through Europe. Why was it so hard to get good birding info in most countries? Would it be possible to unite European birders online and create a site guide for birding in Europe? Yes it was! That’s how Birdingplaces was born in 2019. Before starting Birdingplaces Chris worked for BirdLife in The Netherlands.
Favourite bird: European Bee-eater
Leica supports Birdingplaces
Leica supports our birding community and helps us to realise a website that is free for all users. The high quality precision optics of Leica are perfect for birdwatching. That’s why more and more birders choose for Leica. The absolute top model binoculars is the Leica Noctivid with its superior contrasts and uncompromisingly large depth of field. It is compact, stylish and elegant, but also incredibly robust and durable. The optical quality and focusing precision gives you a three-dimensional viewing experience