- Who
- Peter Kaestner
- Where
- Philippines (Bislig)
- When
Peter Kaestner (USA) sighted his 10,000th unique bird species on 9 February 2024. He reached the landmark with an orange-tufted spiderhunter (Arachnothera flammifera), photographed near Bislig in Mindanao, the Philippines, while accompanied by guide Felizardo Goring. Kaestner has been a diehard “twitcher” for 64 years and uses the IOC World Bird List as his guide. By his own estimation, he ticked off the lion's share (8,600-plus species) during the 36 years he worked as a globetrotting diplomat; he retired in 2016.
Kaestner embarked on his first international birdwatching trip – a visit to the Bahamas – at the age of nine, in 1962.
He entered the US Foreign Service in 1980, although by then he had already spotted around 1,500 species while serving with the Peace Corps in Africa. His career as a diplomat has taken him all around the globe including the Middle East, South-east Asia, Africa, South and Central America and the South Pacific. On 1 October 1986, he was recognized as the first person to have observed at least one species from the then total 159 bird families.
In 1989, he discovered a hitherto-unknown species, the Cundinamarca antpitta, during an expedition near the Colombian capital Bogotá. (Kaestner was working in the city as a US consular officer at the time.) The species was subsequently named Grallaria kaestneri in his honour.
