Sea Birding Pelagic Trips South Africa, Cape Town Pelagics

About Us - Who Are We

Cape Town Pelagics, Birding Africa and Cape Birding Route are all maintained by three South African birders. These birders include two ornithology research students, Callan Cohen and Claire Spottiswoode, and an experienced ornithologist, Prof. Peter Ryan. In addition, Ross Wanless has been managing Cape Town Pelagics since 2005. Ross is a Phd student at the University of Cape Town, studying seabird conservation on Gough Island, with Peter Ryan as one of his advisors.

We run Birding Africa which is a consulting and specialist guiding company. We are endeavouring to encourage eco tourism and international birding interest in Africa, and more specifically our home region around Cape Town.

Birding and ornithology are both hobbies and a career to us, and we hope that these pages will impart to both locals and prospective visitors some of our enthusiasm for this extraordinarily bio diverse region and its landscapes, fauna and flora. Below is a summary of our activities and if you wish for more details please see our Tour Leaders page found on the Birding Africa website.

Callan Cohen and Claire Spottiswoode

Callan and Claire are research students at Cape Town's Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology and birding guides for Birding Africa, a specialist eco tourism company they founded in 1997.

They were born in Cape Town and became dedicated birders at a very young age. At ages 21 and 18, they became successively the youngest people to see the landmark 800 species in southern Africa and presently hold the record for the most bird species seen in one day in western South Africa. Callan and Claire have also birded extensively in little-known parts of the African continent.

They have contributed to several books and magazines, authored an innovative bird-finding guide to western South Africa (Essential Birding in Western South Africa - Struik Publishers 2000). Last year they published a second book that expands this concept to the southern third of Africa (The Southern Africa Birdfinder - Struik Publishers 2006).

Callan and Claire both graduated with distinction from the University of Cape Town and are deeply interested in evolutionary biology, respectively specialising in avian systematic's and behavioural ecology.

Peter Ryan

Peter is a lecturer at the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town. He has also taught ornithology at the University of California. He joined Birding Africa in early 2001, bringing his huge experience of leading numerous African birding tours since 1982.

A keen birder, Peter has birded on all seven continents is a long-standing member of the South African Rarities Committee. He's also co-editor of the VII edition of Roberts Birds of Southern Africa, co-author of a field guide to the birds of the Afro tropics and editor of a field guide to the wildlife of the Tristan da Cunha islands. Peter has also published widely in books and popular and scientific journals. His research interests include the evolutionary ecology of birds, notably the endemic buntings at Tristan da Cunha and African larks and warblers.

Peter is one of the Southern Oceans' most experienced sea birders, having made numerous visits to Gough Island, Tristan da Cunha, the Prince Edward Islands and Antarctica, and regularly guiding on Cape Town Pelagic's.He currently also works on reducing seabird mortality on longlines.

ross wanless

Ross's ornithological pursuits have taken him to some of the most remote islands in the world, and his time spent birding there and en route to these locations has given him a deep appreciation for seabird conservation, and an impressive list of seabird species seen in the hand, at the nest and over open water. His work on the predatory mice of Gough Island drew widespread media interest in 2005, and again in 2007 when the first paper describing the conservation implications of his ground-breaking research was published.

Ross started studying seabirds in 1997 and has been guiding pelagic trips since then. He joined Cape Town Pelagics in 2005, managing the company part-time while writing his doctoral thesis. With him at the helm we have been able to deliver a very professional pelagic tour service to our clients. When he is not at remote islands doing conservation work he is also our lead guide.

Ross recently completed and handed in his doctoral thesis at the University of Cape Town: congratulations!