Cape Town Pelagics - Pelagic Birding in South Africa

About Us - Who Are We

Cape Town Pelagics, Birding Africa and Cape Birding Route are all maintained by three South African birders and ornithology researchers: Callan Cohen, Dr. Claire Spottiswoode, and Prof. Peter Ryan.

We also run Birding Africa, a consulting and specialist guiding company. We endeavour to encourage ecotourism 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 some of our enthusiasm for this extraordinarily biodiverse region. Below is a summary of our background. For more details, please see our Tour Leaders page 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 found 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). 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. He currently also works on reducing seabird mortality on longlines.