Mark Beaman

Mark Beaman lives in Lancashire, England with his partner Inger and is the Managing Director of Birdquest.

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, led a huge number of birding tours along the way, in dozens of countries, and has a worldwide interest in every aspect of birding.

Nonetheless, it is the farthest flung and most inaccessible reaches of the Palearctic region (the great Eurasian continent north of the wet tropics, plus North Africa, where he has travelled more extensively, and seen more species, than any other ornithologist) that continue to excite his imagination.

Mark’s areas of greatest expertise include much of Asia, North Africa, the Cape Verde Islands, Senegal, Chad, Tanzania, Australia and the Pacific Islands, the Subantarctic Islands, Argentina and many parts of North America and the Caribbean.

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).