#17: Alvaro Jaramillo - Birding Your Best Life

My guest today is Alvaro Jaramillo. Alvaro is a highly regarded ornithologist and birder with a long list of authored books and published papers. Born in Chile, raised in Canada, he’s lived in California for the last several years where he operates “Alvaro’s Adventures”, a birding-centric tour company that specializes in combining birding with local cultures across the globe.

Alvaro has a BS in Zoology and a masters in Evolutionary Biology, and is an affiliated senior biologist with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. Alvaro has a wealth of world-wide birding knowledge, is a contributor to Bird Watcher’s Digest, and actively engages in many birding forums. He even helped to identify a new bird species, Oceanites pincoyae (Pincoya Storm-Petrel), found in Chile.

In today’s episode we discuss how Alvaro developed his interest in birds. From authoring his guide to New World Blackbirds, to a fortuitous encounter in Canada that led him to the world of arranging and guiding tours, it is clear the avian adventures were a calling for Alvaro.

We discuss the origins of Alvaro’s Adventures, and some of his amazing global trips, such as his annual journey to Bhutan. And check out his Birds and Wine trip to Chile and Argentina as another great example.

We also talk about pelagic birding - he leads numerous pelagic trips in Northern California each year. If you are unaware of pelagic voyages, they take you far offshore onto the ocean to look for bird species that are next to impossible to see from land. And if that weren’t fun enough, you’ll often encounter whales, porpoises, sunfish, and many other amazing oceanic creatures.

We discuss the groundbreaking impact his Birds of Chile guide had on accelerating Chile’s birding evolution.

After a couple decades of engaging with the public in these capacities, he also has a lot of insight into helping people interpret, enjoy, and see the value of nature - and he offers a few tips and approaches that we can all use.

And while COVID-19 has been challenging, he has turned it into an opportunity to increase his outreach. In addition to many in-depth online workshops, he’s launching a new subscription based online birding community, called “Birding Your Best Life”. Its primary goal is to help people enjoy birds more, regardless of their circumstances and goals. It will include discussion communities, equipment reviews, video tutorials, and much more. As you’ll hear, he has big plans - you can sign up here to be notified of progress.

Other Links/Mentions
Alvaro's Facebook
Birds of Chile - field guide Alvaro, Peter Burke, David Beadle created that helped accelerate Chilean birding
Birdwatchers Digest - Alvaro has written for this publications for many years
National Audubon Society
New World Blackbirds - Alvaro's distraction from his PhD
Colombian Audubon
Debi Shearwater - Alvaro was a spotter with Debi Shearwater, the well known pelagic leader
Eagle Eye Tours - Canadian tour company Alvaro helped start
Field Guides - the larger tour company Alvaro joined after Eagle Eye Tours