OUR CONSULTANTS
Our team of consultants represents the pinnacle of expertise in avian surveys. We pride ourselves on delivering comprehensive and accurate bird surveys, setting the standard in the industry.
THE TEAM
Explore our Island Avian Surveys team of experts...
THOMAS COLLIER
Conservationist
Tom is a British naturalist with a passion for ecology and conservation. He has a background in Ecology, and has dedicated years to working with NGO’s and consultancies, exploring some of the world's most captivating landscapes and ecosystems. His extensive experience encompasses conservation efforts, field research, and guiding across diverse environments, from tropical paradises to remote islands.
Having worked in desert, tropical and temperate regions, Tom has accumulated a profound understanding of the intricate relationships within ecosystems.
His journey as a Conservation Officer in Seychelles, expedition leader to Borneo, biologist in Mauritius and team leader for RSPB in Scotland broadened his perspective on biodiversity conservation.
Tom now works in the Middle East as a consultant ornithologist, assisting and leading bird surveys and biosecurity projects.
GRANT MASLOWSKI
Field Ecologist
Grant has ten years of experience as a field ecologist since completing a Masters in Conservation Biology from The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Birds and bats are his two main passions for fieldwork. In New Zealand he has ringing certifications for passerines, parrots and seabirds, and experience with ringing and surveying birds in Belize, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia and Saudi Arabia. He is also a bat trainer in New Zealand and has bat experience in Belize and with the Smithsonian Bat Lab in Panama.
Grant loves adventure, whether it be wrangling birds or bats on remote islands, jungles or deserts, or in activities like hiking, paragliding and scuba diving. He is not too bad with a camera either, being a contributor with the Nature Picture Library, with pictures published in magazines, books and New Zealand’s national museum Te Papa.
DR. JULIE RIORDAN
Seabird Field Biologist
Dr Julie Riordan is a seabird field biologist with over 15 years of experience working on projects in Australia, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia.
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Julie received her PhD from Griffith University, Australia, under the supervision of Professor Darryl Jones. After completing her PhD, Julie undertook a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Sheffield University with Professor Tim Birkhead. Her researh findings have been published in journal articles and reports and she has presented her research to variety of audiences.
From 2014 – 2021, Julie worked on Skomer Island, Wales, as the field assistant in Professor Tim Birkhead’s team studying the population dynamics and breeding biology of guillemots. She also monitored breeding success of razorbills, guillemots, kittiwakes, fulmars, herring gulls and great black-back gulls as the fieldworker for the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. More recently, Julie has been contracted to survey terns, gulls, crab plovers, ospreys, and sooty falcons in the Red Sea. While seabirds are her passion, she has enjoyed worked with other species including seals, frogs, and mosquitoes.
EDDIE STUBBINGS
Tern Warden
Eddie works alongside Birdwatch Ireland as Tern Warden at Lady’s Island Lake in southeast Ireland where he studies the populations, breeding success and survival rates of Ireland’s largest mixed tern colony and Europe's second largest colony of Roseate Terns.
Eddie has previously been Head Warden at Blakeney Point NNR in North Norfolk (8 years) and Skomer Island NNR in Pembrokeshire (6 years), before going on expedition to Kamchatka to study the migration ecology of waders in 2019 and working on a Stoat eradication project in Orkney with the RSPB in 2021/22. In 2023, he completed three months field work in the Saudi Arabian Red Sea, where he helped with studies on island nesting Ospreys and the abundance and distribution of land birds terrestrially.
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Originating from Norfolk, England, Eddie has always been passionate about nature and conservation and would consider a life spent working in conservation a life well spent. He has written numerous scientific reports and has had several articles published in scientific journals.
CARMEN BIONDO
Naturalist
Carmen Biondo is a naturalist, born and raised on the tiny island of Ventotene, Italy. After completing her studies in Natural Science at the University of Pisa, Carmen spent three years in the Orkney Islands working with the Royal Society for the Conservation of Birds on the Seabirds Count project - a National Census of 25 seabird species across all of Great Britain.
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Upon returning from the Orkney Islands, Carmen contributed to numerous island restoration projects in Italy. These included the Life Diomedee on Tremiti Islands, and the Life PonDerat on Ventotene Island which involved the management of Invasive Alien Species and Seabird research and conservation.
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In Ventotene, Carmen also founded the Lavica Association with the aim of promoting sustainable development on small islands by raising awareness among the local population and tourists through workshops and cultural events. In 2021, Carmen began collaborating with Islands Avian Surveys as a contractor for projects in Saudi Arabia, focusing on seabird research, biosecurity and conservation projects in the Red Sea.
IMOGEN LLOYD
Ornithologist
Imogen Lloyd has worked with seabirds for the last six years on a variety of projects in the UK, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and in the sub-Antarctic.
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Her love for seabirds started in East Yorkshire with the RSPB at Bempton Cliffs where she spent three seasons monitoring a wide range of seabirds from Gannets to Fulmar. Her experience then took her to New Zealand where she spent a summer working on remote islands in the Hauraki Gulf, helping with monitoring and tagging work with Australasian Gannets, several species of Petrels and Shearwaters and Fairy Prions. Having got the bug for island life she then spent a summer in Orkney completing the final year of the seabirds count including carrying out census work of Gulls, Terns, cliff nesters and Storm Petrels.
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From 2021 to 2023 she worked for the British Antarctic Survey on Bird Island, South Georgia as the Penguin and Giant Petrel Zoological Field Assistant. She was responsible for leading all the long-term monitoring and extensive GPS tracking projects on penguins and several species of petrels as well as assisting with work with albatrosses and seals.
CHRIS BELL
Biosecurity Officer
Islands have featured heavily throughout Chris’ career, mainly between the UK and New Zealand. Chris has been an island warden and ranger in amazing places such as Orkney and the Farne Islands in the UK, and Mana and Kapiti islands in NZ, helping protect our natural heritage.
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For a number of years, Chris assisted research into predator control at a landscape level in New Zealand, seabird tracking in NE Scotland, and monitoring a host of seabird species for a year on Gough Island in the remote south Atlantic.
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Chris’ speciality is island biosecurity and loves to keep non-native species from threatening island wildlife. His accomplishments include developing biosecurity on the Orkney Islands to prevent the spread of non-native stoats among the islands, forming the UK’s first certified conservation detection dog team, and most recently advising on island biosecurity in the Red Sea.
JOHANNES CHAMBON
Seabird Biologist
Jo Chambon is a conservationist and seabird biologist with 10 years of experience working in insular ecosystems monitoring wildlife, controlling invasive species, and restoring plant communities. Originally from France, Jo worked on a vast number of islands across New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Mauritius, Greece, Mayotte, French Polynesia, and Australia.
While enthusiastic about all avian and insular ecology, it is with seabirds that his true passion lies and over the years Jo worked with terns, gulls, tropicbirds, frigatebirds, boobies, petrels, shearwaters, and prions. Jo has New Zealand ringing certifications for seabirds and passerines.
Jo received his MRes in Biosciences from Swansea University, UK, and he is currently doing his PhD at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he studies endemic threatened seabird species. His analytical expertise is movement ecology and population dynamics.