Derek Matthews

Derek was born in Hertfordshire, north of London, England and developed a very early interest in birds joining a local ringing group as a young teenager. He steadily pursued his interest in birds and avian research while growing up in England volunteering for monthly BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) censuses of waterfowl and shorebirds on the north Norfolk coast and The Wash. Most memories of birding the north Norfolk coast at that time involve sitting on the back of Kevin (Jeff) Baker’s 50cc Honda moped in the cold, wind and rain for the long drive back to north London in the dark. Kevin went on to become Head of Membership for the BTO and author of the Identification Guide to European Non-Passerines and The Warblers of Europe, Asia and North Africa!

A passionate ornithologist, avian researcher and conservationist; Derek is a Master bird bander and runs the Vancouver Avian Research Centre in addition to leading field trips and bird tours and hosting bird monitoring and banding workshops. He has traveled extensively birding throughout the UK, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Australia, Thailand, Fiji, the U.S. and Canada.

Derek enjoys sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm for birds and the environment with others, and this can be seen from the many testimonials from participants in the workshops he teaches. He is also known as an entertaining educator and charismatic speaker who addresses groups across the country on issues relating to birds and the environment.

His other love is Arsenal Football Club – a lifelong supporter of the Gunners he follows their results wherever he is and offers free drinks to all Arsenal supporters who visit his home which is always open to visiting birders and banders - unfortunately Manchester United supporters have to pay double!!

Derek lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Devin Manky

Devin was born and raised in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. His love for wildlife extends back into his childhood where he has fond memories of feeding birds, catching (and releasing!) snakes, bugs and other small animals. Devin grew up on the North Shore of Vancouver and attended the University of British Columbia where he earned a degree that included studies in animal biology, welfare, history and behavior.

While chipping away at his degree, Devin worked and volunteered for many interesting organizations around Vancouver including the SPCA, the Vancouver Aquarium, Greyhaven Exotic Bird Sanctuary, and the Wildlife Rescue association of British Columbia.

After graduating, Devin worked full time as a Senior Wildlife Rehabilitator at the Wildlife Rescue Association (WRA). At WRA, he gained hands on experience with most species of native BC wildlife – both avian and mammal. The work handling thousands of birds every year quickly developed Devin’s skills in bird identification, aging and safe restraint. During his first year at WRA Devin was exposed to bird banding and quickly developed a passion for molt limits, banding techniques and banding studies. Of course this appetite for experience led to further volunteer work and this is when Devin met Derek and Carol Matthews and was introduced to the work being done at Burnaby Lake and elsewhere.

Since these earlier years, Devin has gone on to band thousands of birds of over one hundred species, set-up his own hummingbird monitoring station and continue the work with Derek in regards to continuing banding studies and the education of future banders. Recently Devin was proud to receive certification as a Master Bird Bander.

Devin now works as the Wildlife Manager for the Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife where he is in charge of two orphaned grizzly bears, a pack of timber wolves and a few endangered Spotted Owls. Devin is also in charge of developing on-going bird banding projects for the mountain top.

In addition to birding and wildlife studies, Devin is an avid hiker, scuba diver, camper and climber! If an activity involves being outdoors there is a good chance that he will be into it! Devin is also a devoted Vancouver Canucks fan and is working on convincing Derek that hockey is the sport of Canada and that football involves throwing a ball!

As part of his job at Grouse Mountain, Devin and his wife live year round in a mountain top cabin and love catching the first skiing tracks the day after a good snowfall.

Mark Habdas

Mark came to Canada in 1981, where he fell in love with birds and Beautiful British Columbia. He is an active member of Vancouver Natural History Society, and is involved in many bird related projects. Mark teaches a variety of computer courses at the Vancouver School Board, and is responsible for this website. Seeing as this biography is so short, you may have already assumed he dislike writing about himself, however, his love for birds goes far beyond words.

This was demonstrated this year when Mark traveled 5,000 kilometers in his old van to visit banding stations in northern BC and the Yukon and considering Mark never drives above 50 kilometers an hour this was definitely a labour of love!

Mark is also the Centre’s official photographer and provides our website design and maintenance.

Carol Matthews

Carol is Derek’s long-suffering wife and shares his love of birds and banding but not of Arsenal football club! (Even on cold winter banding days she refuses to wear her Arsenal winter hat!!)

Carol is an accomplished businesswoman and has two main roles at the Centre. The first is data recording and the analytical and statistical tasks associated with processing and analyzing the results of our research.

Her other main role is the design and management of the Bird Monitoring & Banding and Bird Identification Workshops which owe their success to her considerable organizational skills.

A self-confessed travel nut Carol has traveled and birded throughout the world and is a strong advocate for raising awareness of environmental issues and conservation.

Kerry was born and raised in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, but travelled to the University of Guelph, Ontario to complete her Bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Biology. Right after graduation she began the first of many jobs that would take her to various locations around the western US. She has over 15 years of professional biology experience within that accumulating many banding hours with thousands of birds banded.

Her love for birds began in Hawaii where she worked on a project banding native forest passerines. Kerry then moved to San Diego, California where she worked with various animal species, everything from rattlesnakes to song birds. She worked in Oregon with small mammals, then in Arizona with the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher. She continued that work back in San Diego where she became one of California’s experts on willow flycatcher ecology.

The lure of family and fond memories of beautiful British Columbia caused Kerry to return home, this time with her husband, when she was pregnant with her first child. Two children later and looking to get back into biology she met Derek and Carol and has been banding with them since April, 2010. She is thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute her biology and bird banding experience to VARC but most of all is thrilled to be learning all there is to know about molt limits!

Outside of biology and birding Kerry is an avid photographer and earned her professional certificate in photography at the University of California. She is also a runner and fitness nut; however, most of her time now is devoted to her two daughters.
 

Jason Jones (Ph.D.) 

Jason was born in Hamilton, Ontario, but soon moved to Vancouver then onward to Kelowna. Jason’s interest in the outdoors was fostered both by his parents and by several influential elementary school teachers. Jason completed his Bachelor of Science degree (Biology and Environmental Sciences) at the University of Victoria and his doctorate at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. His doctoral research focused on habitat selection and population dynamics of the Cerulean Warbler and incorporated field work in the deciduous forests of eastern Ontario and in forests and shade-coffee plantations in the Andes Mountains in Venezuela. Following the completion of his doctorate, Jason spent three years as a Research and Teaching Fellow at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and then four years as a faculty member in biology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. For the past four years, Jason has worked as an environmental consultant, primarily within the context of renewable energy strategies and development. Jason has just returned to Vancouver after 15 years in eastern Canada and New England.

Jason was first introduced to bird banding at the Rocky Point Bird Observatory in the early 1990s and, in addition to his own research, has contributed to efforts at the Long Point Bird Observatory and the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory in Ontario. Jason is currently an Associate Editor for The Auk, a Reviewing Editor for The Condor, and co-edited the most recent third edition of the Guidelines to the Use of Wild Birds in Research published by The Ornithological Council.  

In addition to his love of birds and the outdoor, Jason is a jazz/blues piano player who plays with several different bands in Vancouver and another long-suffering fan of the Vancouver Canucks!

Debbie Wheeler (Ph.D.) was born in Hertfordshire, north of London, in England. She did not have an early interest in birds, she did not develop a passion for birds while still in nappies and she did not hang around as a teenager with people in anoraks with binoculars strung around their necks. Nope, she was just an ordinary girl who loved all things natural. She grew up with cats and dogs, rabbits and hamsters, brothers and a sister and she loved them all (except for the brothers and sister, she didn’t like them very much a lot of the time). She went to high school in Berkhamsted and then went on to study biology at the University of Exeter in Devon. Then she didn’t know what to do, so she travelled, first to Australia and then to the U.S. and that was when she discovered one of her passions – travel. Of course, being the sensible type that she is, she then decided it was time to continue her education and she travelled all the way to Canada – to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver – to do her PhD, studying botanical insecticides. Well, she had heard the skiing was quite good and it was quite pretty there. While studying, she met her future husband and settled down and now lives in sunny Tsawwassen with her husband and two cats – yes, she has two cats, get over it, they are gorgeous!

Debbie now works as a biologist at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford. She is actually an entomologist. Well, that is what her colleagues and qualifications will tell you. An entomologist studies insects, and do you know how many of them there are out there? Well, conservative estimates put it in the over a million range. So, next time you catch an insect, don’t expect her to know what species it is! Given the difficulties associated with identifying insects, she has decided to branch out, widen her horizons, spread her wings, so to speak, and she has started to develop an interest in birds. Well, there are apparently less than 700 bird species in Canada, so her chances of correctly identifying one are dramatically improved. However, she is still a neophyte bird nerd, so she may require a little more time before she can distinguish a herring gull from a western gull or a dusky flycatcher from a grey flycatcher.

Along with travelling, Debbie’s other passion is photographing nature, be it flora or fauna, furry or feathered, leafy or scaly. She has travelled the world looking for that grizzly bear about to catch a salmon as it struggles its way upstream or that leafy sea dragon hovering serenely over a bed of seaweed. She has puked her guts out while struggling over the high passes of the Inca trail and vomited through her regulator while scuba diving with over 50 sharks in the Coral Sea – she will do anything for a good photo!

Debbie does have one more hobby that she enjoys immensely – gloating over Derek whenever Arsenal Football Club loses. It is quite an easy hobby and very satisfying!
 

Eric Demers (B.Sc., Ph.D., R.P.Bio.)

Eric is an Instructor in the Biology Department at Vancouver Island University, where he teaches courses in freshwater ecology, environmental monitoring, biological statistics and tropical biology. Eric has supervised numerous undergraduate students working on a range of ecological projects, including the breeding ecology and migration of purple martins. Eric has completed the bird banding and monitoring workshop at the Vancouver Avian Research Centre (VARC) in 2008. He has also received one-on-one training from master banders Derek Matthews (VARC) and Gabe David (Rocky Point Bird Observatory; RPBO). He has contributed to net extraction and banding programs at VARC, RPBO and the Tatlayoko Lake Bird Observatory. In addition, he is a regular contributor to programs such as the Coastal Waterbird Survey, Beached Bird Survey, BC Breeding Bird Atlas and Nocturnal Owl Survey.
 

Mike Nutter, M.Sc.

Mike grew up on military bases in England and Cyprus before immigrating to eastern Canada with his parents as a teenager in 1965. He spent his latter youth in rural Ontario and graduated from the University of Guelph before embarking on a masters degree in Environmental Sciences at the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

He has worked for the Environmental Services Group of a Canadian multi-discipline engineering firm for the past 33 years. Environmental Assessment and auditing assignments have exposed him to remote locations and cultures in all five continents and throughout Canada. Living and working in these different regions provided first hand exposure to a diverse range of habitat types and species - time could usually be found for nature excursions or bird watching. Birding has remained a life-long interest.

Mike was an avid soccer player until his late 30’s before taking on a coaching role for the next 14 years (local to Regional AA). He remains a loyal follower of the English Premier League “Red Devils”, Manchester United (don’t mention this to Derek). He also enjoys hiking, canoeing/kayaking and occasionally golf but sees few birdies and eagles on course.

Staying involved, getting to know natures marvels up close and helping to preserve a unique place is an enjoyable pursuit for this Coquitlam, British Columbia resident.