Our Guides
A lifelong birdwatcher and naturalist, Bill began his conservation and guiding career in the early 1980s with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds at Titchwell Marsh, its flagship reserve on the North Norfolk coast. He gained broad field experience in warden roles with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Norfolk Wildlife Trust, and Hampshire County Council before spending seven years as a Wildlife Ranger in the Lee Valley Regional Park. After working with Noisy Scrubbirds on Western Australia’s south coast, he moved to Australia in 1999 to manage Broome Bird Observatory. Building on his early guiding work in the UK, Bill expanded his tour-leading career in Australia and has led birding trips across Indonesia—including Java, Bali, and Sulawesi—as well as Alaska, South Africa, and Uganda. He is now Managing Director of OTS, where he runs the company and continues to guide tours. Bill also serves as Vice President of the Australian Bird Study Association, State Coordinator of the Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme, and a member of BirdLife Australia’s Western Australian rarities committee.
Bill Rutherford
Nick became an early birder at the age of 8 and this quickly developed into a lifelong passion and career, taking him around the world in search of birds. He began this career in his hometown of Harare, volunteering for BirdLife Zimbabwe in the early 2010s. He has been organising and leading his own birding trips for the last 15 years, and this naturally evolved into a career in bird guiding. Nick’s guiding experience encompasses Western Australia where he now calls home, and still holds a love for Africa and other international destinations.
Outside of tour guiding, he works and volunteers as an ornithologist and has lent his skills to the conservation of Western Australian birds such as Western Grasswren and Western Ground Parrot.