With great recommendations from longtime Field Guides Mitch Lysinger and Rose Ann Rowlett, and with enthusiastic evaluations received from participants on the tours he has guided with us in the past year, we are delighted to have Willy Perez on the Field Guides team!

Willy has been leading birding tours for more than ten years. He has also worked as a resident guide at Maquipucuna Reserve on the west slopes of the Andes, on a project protecting marine turtles in Costa Rica, and on bird conservation in northwestern Ecuador. He was a resident guide at Kapawi Lodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon for three years, mastering the art of finding and identifying the many secretive birds of the lowland rainforest. He has since guided throughout Ecuador including the East and West slopes of the Andes, the Amazon Basin, the Galapagos Islands, and southern Ecuador. During the last few years he has also guided birding groups in Bolivia.

In his free time he trains local guides and is a frequent lecturer, in English and in Spanish, on birding and conservation issues in the Neotropics. Willy's wife, Fiona, is British and he has traveled with her to England several times to bird and visit family. He speaks excellent English and has an engaging and outgoing personality that makes every tour he leads enjoyable and fun.

Willy has a full Field Guides schedule on trips to Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru both guiding by himself as well as with various longtime Field Guides leaders many of you know well from past tours with us. We know any of these trips will provide some terrific birding experiences and the chance to get to know a new Field Guides leader we think you will want to travel with again and again.

"This was a great experience! I really liked Willy Perez and his guiding style. Willy was great about telling us what birds he was calling, where they should show up, and reminding us how they looked and acted. And your office staff was wonderful---thanks for all your work. After two Field Guides tours with two superior guides, Jesse Fagan and Willy Perez, my problem now is deciding which of their tours to take next!" P. R., Amazonian Ecuador: Sacha Lodge I 2012

"Thanks so much to guides Dave Stejskal and Willy Perez for making this 'a trip of a lifetime' to always be remembered up there in the 'top 10.' It was an excellent tour experience." C. & R. S., Ecuador's Rainforest & Andes 2011