Presenters:
Adrian Leslie – Nelson BC
Adrian is the West Kootenay Program Manager for the Nature Conservancy of Canada and has been working in the Columbia Basin on ecosystem conservation, restoration and research for 20 years. He is a Registered Professional Biologist with experience working in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems from low elevation floodplains to high elevation forests throughout the Columbia Basin. He has a Master’s degree in Environment and Management and has lead several research and restoration projects, and has extensive experience helping organizations complete environmental projects. Adrian has managed the Darkwoods Conservation Area and the Frog Bear Conservation corridor properties in the Creston Valley for the Nature Conservancy of Canada since 2015.
Lindsay Donald – Creston BC
Lindsay Donald is an international award-winning wildlife photographer. Originally from
Scotland, he has a degree in zoology and animal behavior from the University of Hull in the
United Kingdom. Lindsay started taking photographs to illustrate animal behavior for a research
project in the late 1970’s. He has travelled the World in search of amazing wildlife images. In
North America he travels from Florida to Alaska and makes frequent visits to Africa including
Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe & Zambia. Lindsay has also taught wildlife
photography techniques and led photographic workshops.
Lindsay moved to West Creston over 3 years ago with his wife Lorraine, golden retriever
Bentley and Stormy the cat. Destiny is a recent addition to the family and is a golden retriever
adoption from PAWS. Lindsay is Director of Wildsight Creston Valley and Regional Director for
Wildsight. He also supports his community as a volunteer fire fighter with the Creston Valley
Fire Service.
https://www.donaldphotography.com/
Tammy Bradford – Creston BC
Creston Museum
Tammy Bradford spends most of her time at the Creston Museum, where she’s been the manager/curator/executive director/janitor for twenty-five years. When she’s not cataloguing artifacts, creating exhibits, or tracking down some detail in the archives, she’s either driving people nuts with her endless stories of local history or taking long walks with her camera and trying to convince the birds to cooperate for a photo. She’s an avid-though-easily-distracted birdwatcher, a champion deleter of bad bird photography, a figure skater and skating coach, and the world’s greatest crazy aunt.
Kim Asquith – Creston BC
Kim is a wildlife biologist turned naturalist with a keen interest in birds, botany, and gardening. She enjoys sharing her love and knowledge of nature.
Angela Prettie – Creston BC
Stargazer
Angela Prettie has been an astronomy enthusiast since she was a teenager. She learned the constellations and star names by looking at a map with a red- cellophane covered flashlight (Very important to keep eye pupils dilated). She can bring her binoculars along, and will teach you how to find the main circumpolar constellations (e.g. Big and Little Dipper, Cassiopeia and Cepheus) as well as the zodiac and seasonal constellations for that night.
Birding Tour Leaders:
Marc-André Beaucher – Creston BC
Marc-André arrived in the Kootenays in 1995 from Sherbrooke, Quebec, where he grew up. He worked as a consulting biologist for a few years before taking on a biologist position at the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area, in 2003. He is now the Head of Conservation Programs. In his free time, Marc-André enjoys watching and photographing birds and wildlife, and spending time in the great outdoors with his family.
Marc-André is a Registered Professional Biologist (B.C. College of Applied Biologists) and holds a B.Sc.
in Applied Zoology from McGill University (1996) and a M.Sc. in Environment and Management from
Royal Roads University (2005).
Seth Benoit – Westbridge, BC
Seth is a young birder located in the Kootenay Boundary BC on a remote property. Since the age of seven, when he started birding, Seth has had the opportunity to travel to many birding destinations in North America, namely Madera Canyon, AZ, and Point Pelee, ON. Although Seth has traveled, most of his birding time is spent at home studying bird trends, sound ID and photography. Hiking is also a big part of his free time, so he combines it with birding on a daily basis. He has also been working on a bird book for the Kootenay Boundary Region for the last couple years. Seth was the recipient of the 2024 “Young Birder” award with the British Columbia Field Ornithologist!
Joachim Bertrands – Victoria BC
Ornis Birding Expeditions: https://www.ornis-birding.com/
Joachim is a lifelong naturalist, hailing from urbanized Belgium but having found his life of choice in western Canada. With an obsessive interest in all things birding, he managed to make birds his profession as he currently tries pushing his own limits by leading cutting-edge birding expeditions all over the world. In his own life, he enjoys spending time at his local patch, studying bird migration at his own pace and with his own critical thinking tries to deduct new ID features and facts by observational science.
Mannfred Boehm – Nelson BC
Boreal Avian Modelling Project: https://borealbirds.ca
Mannfred is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Boreal Avian Modelling Project at University of Alberta. While his training is in field botany, he got hooked on birds while studying plant-hummingbird coevolution in the southeastern Andes of Peru. After university, Mannfred moved to Nelson and has since been involved with the Audubon Christmas Bird Count as both participant and organizer for Area 11 (North Shore). He’s currently studying the impacts of resource industries on boreal bird populations with his colleagues in Edmonton, and in his free time, exploring the beautiful mountains of the Kootenays.
Daryl Calder – Cranbrook BC
Daryl became a naturalist at an early age around the outskirts of Victoria. Following his education at UVic, he settled in Cranbrook and became involved with a number of outdoor pursuits for work and recreation. Daryl and Marianne Nahm are involved with Rocky Mountain Naturalists in the East Kootenay. The naturalist club is very active with a wide variety of projects, many of which involve the study of birds. Daryl leads weekly birding trips for naturalists, participating in Christmas Bird Counts and occasionally providing articles to the local newspapers.
Julia Flesaker – Nakusp BC
Julia grew up in the West Kootenay and after getting a Bachelor degree in Natural Resource Sciences from TRU, she went on to teach secondary sciences in Nakusp. She is an avid birder, naturalist and photographer. When not working Julia is out exploring nature by bike, foot or paddle. She began birding in 2017 under the mentorship of Gary Davidson. Since then Julia now tries to bird daily and has taken this curiosity on her travels in Vietnam, Panama, Texas, and recently Costa Rica.
Jo Ellen Floer – Cranbrook BC and Dale Floer – Burnaby BC
Birding is in the family with this mother/son pair as both took a deep interest in birding several years ago. Jo Ellen is an avid naturalist and outdoor enthusiast. She loves traveling to foreign lands to find exotic birds. Her most recent trip is to Bhutan. The pair travelled to Tanzania last year, an amazing place for both birds and wildlife. Dale enjoys the intersection of birding and technology, whether it be finding new ways to use eBird data or livestreaming birding. He enjoys bird photography and is a Birdability Captain. Both enjoy sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm with others.
Lyle Grisedale – Kimberley BC
Lyle Grisedale lives in Kimberley, BC and is an Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG) Guide who spends his summers leading hikers in the Selkirk, Purcell, and Rocky Mountains He is an enthusiastic birder, an avid photographer, and naturalist who spends as much time as possible exploring the mountains, wetlands and grasslands of the East Kootenays area of British Columbia.
The Creston Valley Bird Fest would like to thank Lyle for samples of his photography throughout this website and in our advertising. For more information, please visit his website
Aiva Noringseth – Victoria BC
BC Nature’s IBA Program
A life- long Vancouver Islander and proud ‘nature nerd’, Aiva (she/they) currently resides on W̱SÁNEĆ territory in Victoria, BC and most recently completed a B.Sc. in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. A well- rounded generalist with natural history and biodiversity, she is most passionate about vertebrates and spends most of her time birding and collaborating on bird conservation through the BC IBA Program, Rocky Point Bird Observatory and other avian orgs. Having grown up exploring the coastal waters of BC, Aiva is keen to expand into the eastern reaches of the province and will be starting bird banding with Vaseux Lake Bird Observatory in August. She is currently the Field Coordinator with BC Nature’s IBA Program. When not birding, Aiva is often uploading observations to iNaturalist, looking at maps, or playing outside.
Julia Shewan – Creston BC
Julia grew up in the Kootenays and from a young age was enamored with our feathered friends (the sound of Ruby-crowned Kinglets will always remind her of home!). She left to go to UBC in Vancouver and get her BSc and spent over a decade in the big city working as a wildlife biologist for an environmental consulting firm, where she travelled across western Canada and completed field studies for birds and other vertebrate species. She is safely back on home soil and has been working at the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area for the past several years, during which time she has gotten to know the Creston Valley’s feathered, furry, scaley, and smooth and slimy inhabitants pretty well. Outside of work, she’s often found outside having adventures with her young family and trying to develop her green thumb (all easier said than done!).
Sachi Snively – Queens Bay BC
Birder, Bander, Biologist, and Naturalist with a healthy interest in orchids, butterflies, and anything else that catches his lens.
Sachi Snively has a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Biology from the University of Victoria. Growing up in the Kootenays, his interest in wildlife was sparked at an early age. As a Field Biologist he continues to contribute to a variety of projects in BC and Alberta including his banding work at the Tatlayoko Lake Bird Observatory which is in the western Chilcotin District of the Central Interior of BC.
Ulrike Sliworsky – Creston BC
Ulrike is a birder that lives in Creston. She has a science degree from the University of Manitoba with an Ornithology major. In addition to re-introducing endangered species such as Peregrine Falcons and Burrowing Owls, she has also banded waterfowl and songbirds. She has enjoyed participating in Audubon’s Christmas bird counts for over 30 years in various communities and is now the Coordinator/Compiler for the Creston Valley as well as the Kuskanook Christmas Bird Counts. Having been a Park Naturalist, she enjoys sharing her love and knowledge of nature especially with her son and visiting birders!
