3-04-2024 4:05am

WORLD'S #1 BIRDWATCHER

Peter Kaestner is the world’s #1 birder who has spent a lifetime sharing his passion for birds with others. Always a birder, Peter’s first international trip was at age nine in 1962, when he visited the Bahamas. In 1967 he spent a school year in New Delhi and returned twice as a diplomat to work at the U.S. Embassy there.

Along the way, he has birded in 190 eBird “countries” and currently holds eBird’s biggest world life list (9801). Peter was the first birder to see 9800 and 9900 species of birds, and his IOC list stands at 9943 as of December 2023. Peter is also recognized in the Guinness Book of Records as the first person to see a representative of every bird family in the world.

Peter has been leading international bird tours since 1978 and started working for Rockjumper in 2019. He has guided in North and South America, Africa, and South and South-East Asia.

After receiving a degree in Biology at Cornell University (where he was an Ornithology teaching assistant), Peter served in the Peace Corps in Zaire as a secondary-school science teacher.

During his 36-year career as a U.S. diplomat, he helped negotiate the UN Desertification Convention in 1994 and a protocol amending the 1916 Migratory Bird Convention with Canada in 1995. He represented the United States at Conferences of the Parties of the Ramsar Convention and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). (During his employment with the U.S. State Department, he did not work as a tour guide.)

Peter has lived in 12 different countries where he contributed to the scientific knowledge and conservation of birds, led scores of bird walks, and authored dozens of articles. He re-discovered several birds in Colombia and Ecuador. But the highlight of Peter’s birding career came in 1989, when he was living in Bogotá. Just 50 kilometers east of the Colombian capital, he discovered a new bird – an antpitta named in his honor: Grallaria kaestneri (Cundinimarca Antpitta)

Since his retirement in August 2016, Peter has become a full-time birder, striving to be the first person to see 10,000 species. Peter gets the most satisfaction in sharing his passion for birds through involvement in local bird clubs, leading bird walks and tours, and giving illustrated lectures on birds around the world. In 2023, he was appointed aa a brand ambassador for the American Bird Conservancy.