Miguel Aguilar

Miguel is based in Mexico City, where he studied biology at the National University of Mexico (UNAM). He was interested in the natural world from a young age, especially reptiles and dinosaurs. It was during his time at university that he found a renewed interest in modern dinosaurs, being part of the university’s birding club; ‘Aves FC’.

Once he started leading for ‘Aves FC’, he had his first guiding experiences organizing bird walks in Mexico City and also taking groups on birding adventures to some of Mexico’s most important biodiversity areas, including Oaxaca, Chiapas and the Yucatan Peninsula.

He has worked for the National Commission of Biodiversity (CONABIO), in particular in the Mexican counterpart of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI). There, he directed the ‘Community-Based Bird Monitoring Network’ and collaborated with numerous other bird-related projects. He is an eBird reviewer and works for Merlin as an annotator for the Merlin Sound ID of Cornell University.

Throughout the years his interest in birds has only grown, taking him to explore his own country and others. His main areas of expertise are in Mexico, but he has also spent a lot of time in Ecuador and Colombia. He has guided many tours in Mexico, but also recently in Colombia.

Despite his interest in photography, bird sound recording has more recently gained priority, being one of the main ways he spends his free time. Miguel likes nothing more than to explore new areas of Mexico and elsewhere in the world, scouting for potential new tour routes and sound recording while he does so.