The Worlds Rarest Birds

Erik Hirschfeld lives in Malmö, Sweden. He started birding seriously in 1973, at the age of 14, when a flock of Waxwings perched outside his bedroom window as he was doing his maths homework. He picked up a bird book, made a list of what he could see at his family’s holiday destination the coming summer, and barely passed his maths exam as a result! Erik has been heavily involved in ornithology since the early 1980s while pursuing a professional career in Air Traffic Control. Waders have always held a particular fascination, and Erik set up shorebird ringing schemes in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi. He has a number of publications to his name, mainly on identification, phenology and migration and is on the advisory panel to Birdwatch Magazine. City birding and how birds make man-made areas their habitat is a subject that has attracted Erik’s attention recently and one of his other projects is a book about the interactions between humans, the urban environment and birds in his hometown, which will be published in late 2010. Erik is available for lectures and guiding and can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Andy Swash lives near Exeter, UK. His interest in birds started in 1966, when, like Erik, he saw a flock of Waxwings feeding on Hawthorn berries in the grounds of his school.  He is the Managing Director and Commissioning Editor of the successful not-for-profit publishing company WILDGuides and, with his wife Gill, a partner in the well-known photographic agency World Wildlife Images. Andy is a zoologist and professional ecologist with a wide sweep of natural history knowledge, and is the author of a number of books including Birds, Mammals and Reptiles of Galápagos, Britain's Dragonflies and Britain's Butterflies. During his extensive global travels, Andy has been privileged to have been able to watch and photograph a spectacular diversity of wild animals and plants - and has amassed a portfolio of images of over 3,000 bird species alone. He co-founded WILDGuides in 1999 with a commitment to supporting conservation through the sales of its publications. Andy is available for lectures and guiding and can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Rob Still lives near Basingstoke, UK. He is a qualified ecologist and widely travelled naturalist and set up his own graphic design and artwork business in 1989. Rob has been working with computer graphics since their inception and acquired a high level of expertise in digital imaging. He has skillfully managed to combine his passion for wildlife with his knowledge of the latest technology to produce a series of publications for the commercial and charitable sector. He co-founded WILDGuides in 1999 with the aim of producing innovative and easy-to-use wildlife field guides for Britain, Europe and beyond. Rob is also an outstanding artist and his work has appeared in many publications - one of his paintings even hangs in the Trinidad and Tobago High Commission in Nigeria! Rob can be contacted at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .