Warwick Tarboton is a well-known bird expert and writer of several well-received books. He is a past president of BirdLife South Africa and has been awarded the Gill Memorial Medal and the Stevenson-Hamilton award for services to ornithology and zoology. Peter Ryan is an Emeritus Professor at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town. He is a keen bird photographer, has travelled widely in pursuit of birds and has authored a range of books on birds and various subantarctic islands.