About

My name is Marnix Roels. From the moment that I acquired my first digital camera in 2008, I started using it to capture pictures of natural history interest. It was, however, only after several years, and after I had been to interesting places like Ecuador and the Galapagos, Botswana, Myanmar and Argentina / Brazil that I started to notice that I had acquired a substantial catalogue of usable bird pictures. I also noticed that sometimes I had taken pictures of birds, identified them at the time, and subsequently totally forgot what they were, and had to re-identify them all over again. That’s what made me start the “Fighting Identity Amnesia” page (now renamed to “Memo to Self: What’s That Bird?”).

Once I had started doing a number of blog entries, I noticed that my 1976 copy of “Birds of Britain and Europe” no longer matched the current understanding of how various groups of birds fitted together, and I managed to trace two recent DNA-driven studies published in Nature and Science, which made me take note of the fact that (for instance) storks and herons are not particularly closely related, and neither are eagles and falcons. So I decided to try and allocate my bird pictures in what I hope matches current thinking on bird taxonomy to some extent.

I hope that the result is worth it. Good hunting !

P.S. Although all the pictures and YouTube videos used in my blogs are mine, I’m a great believer in the Creative Commons, and as such I wholeheartedly approve of people using my pictures and videos for whatever purpose they see fit.

Just a reminder: I also have a number of other sites that might interest you. Have a look at the following ones: