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I have been privileged to visit a great many places across the world learning about wildlife. To keep records of all the lifeforms I encounter, I use iNaturalist. I have contributed over 13,000 observations and 63,000 identifications on iNat, which I also help curate.
I keep a record of all the birds I encounter on eBird. I also help curate eBird's data--I am a Reviewer and Hotspot Editor for Southern Africa, Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha, Ascension Island, and St. Helena.

Photography

Some of the photographs I take while traveling the world are on iNaturalist. Most however, are on a hard drive at home. To change this, I'm in the process of moving some photos to my Flickr Page. You can track this process by clicking on the button below.
It should be clear to anyone stumbling onto my website that I have a deep appreciation for wildlife. The roots in my love for nature can be tracked down to my best childhood memories--family vacations in South Africa's Kruger National Park. In fact, I learned to read from the very first edition of Birds of Southern Africa, 1: Kruger National Park. While I obviously was a birder before then, my first bird memory is walking the Paradise Flycatcher Trial in Punda Maria Camp, and seeing an African Green-Pigeon right at the end of the trial (right by the stairs in front of reception). This was in April 1985, almost a full year before I went to school.

What started off as an obsession with birds has come to dominate my personal and professional life. I have been fortunate to experience biodiversity in a great many ways. For example, I am a qualified scuba diver, bird bander/ringer, advanced reptile handler, and sometimes even a freelance tour guide. I also have experience in conducting and teaching various biodiversity survey techniques, including radio tracking, mark-recapture, triangulation, and distance sampling (see here where I used my bird survey knowledge to develop a new protocol for endangered insects living in a sensitive environment).

I have also had some extraordinary experiences. Primary among these would be the 13 months I spent on uninhabited Gough Island in the South Atlantic Ocean, where I was part of an 2-person team fighting invasive mice that were eating albatrosses larger than turkeys!!! 

In 2001, I participated in the Pretoria Bird Club's 400 Challenge. The objective of the competition was to see who could record 400 bird species within 100 km from central Pretoria, South Africa. I was the first person to record 300 and 400 species (only one other person reached this milestone), and eventually ended overall winner. My record of 412 species stood for 12 years—it was finally broken in 2013, an amazing year during which several birders cracked the 450 mark!!!

My one and only Birding Big Day (an annual event hosted by Birdlife South Africa to see who records the most bird species in 24 hrs within a 50 km radius) was also in 2001, when I was team leader of Maven Technologies Pretoria Challengers. Our three-man team finished with 251 species, which was enough to be winner of the open category (unfortunately we were never officially recognized because the post office lost our entry form boohoo).