Michael Burton-Smith

Like many others at a young age, Michael was fascinated by dinosaurs, with walls coated in dinosaur art, shelves full of dinosaur books, and a toy box of dinosaur models. Unfortunately, however, dinosaurs are pretty hard to see, and so at age six he made a conversion to their living descendants — birds! Growing up in New Zealand, he had the extraordinary luxury of growing up in a land of strange and wonderful species, from the iconic Kiwi to the enigmatic Kākāpō and the primitive Tītipounamu. At university, he combined this love for birds with history, completing a dissertation on the sensory experiences of British bird-watchers between 1919 and 1939. He began guiding professionally in New Zealand in 2022, initially focused on birds but steadily expanding to be a more general naturalist as his knowledge and interest grew. With experience birding around the globe, he has begun spending the austral winter guiding in the Northern Hemisphere, and always finds time between tours to go camping in remote corners of Europe!