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Here are some short biographies of a few of our tour organizers. Co-founder of Ornifolks, G. Michael Flieg became interested in birds as a Boy Scout where he advanced to the Eagle rank. He pursued a Wildlife Management degree at the University of Missouri. Upon graduation he joined the staff of the St. Louis Zoo where he advanced to Curator of Birds. Later he accepted this position at the Chicago Zoo in Brookfield. Mike did extensive research on grouse in Canada over an 11 year period. He was named Ornithologist for the American Quintana Roo Expedition. He received the Antarctic medal as a result of two penguin collecting expeditions to the continent. He did field work in the Andes, and along the Amazon, and spent six weeks collecting birds and eggs on St. Lawrence Island. He has collected first breeding certificates for four avian species and was elected to the Avicultural Hall of Fame. He has published nearly 100 technical articles which are distributed in Ornithological, Avicultural and Veterinary Journals. Mike has organized and led several birding tours all over the world, and has birded on all of the continents. Recently he has written Photographic Guides to the West Indies and South Florida, and is working on a site guide to the West Indies. Mark Elwonger is a registered professional engineer and owner of Gulf Coast Plant Engineering in Victoria, Texas. Mark is the junior author of Birding Texas, published by Falcon Press, and is the author of Finding Birds on the Central Texas Coast. Through Ornifolks, he has been instrumental in organizing about ten birding trips to South & Central America, Australia, Asia and Africa, since 1991. Guy Kirwan is a freelance ornithological editor and tour guide based in Norwich, UK. He has been involved in the production of a number of seminal works in recent years, including two volumes of the universally acclaimed Handbook of the Birds of the World, the updated (1996) version of Sibley's Distribution and Taxonomy of the Birds of the World, Birdlife's Threatened Birds of the World, and a monograph of the Sylvia Warblers. He is co-author of three works on Middle Eastern ornithology. A regular contributor to the technical and more popular periodic literature on birds, he has spent approximately four years (of the last decade) in the field, principally in his favourite countries of Turkey, Cuba and Brazil. Chris Bradshaw is a freelance bird tour leader based in Kent, South-east England. Chris runs layover and short-break birding trips in the UK and has travelled extensively in the Western Palearctic (including repeated trips to Morocco, Spain, France & Turkey) and Asia (India, Nepal, Kazakstan, China and Thai-Malay peninsula). In addition he has led tours to India (4 tours in Goa), China (Beidaihe), Peninsula Malaysia, Vietnam, Cuba, Canada and many locations across the UK. Check out Chris's site at http://www.northkentbirding.freeserve.co.uk/index.html
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