Josh Vandermeulen

Joined: Mar 9, 2018 Last Active: Mar 18, 2024 iNaturalist Canada

I am a naturalist from Ontario, Canada. At the moment, my main interests include birds, herps and Lepidoptera, but I am interested in most facets of the natural world. I lead birding and nature tours in Ontario, and my website is ONshorebirding.com.

I grew up in Ontario and my home province's ecology holds a special place in my heart. However in recent years my interests have grown outside the confines of Ontario's borders. The tropical regions of the world, particularly the Americas, hold a certain allure and I am always looking forward to my next trip.

My wife, Laura, and I quit our jobs in August 2019 - her as a veterinarian, and I as a biologist with an engineering firm - with a plan to travel throughout the Neotropics for several years. We spent three months in Ecuador, two months in Colombia and one month in Costa Rica until the pandemic shut down our travels. After an 18 month hiatus, we resumed our travels in the fall of 2021. Since then we have traveled in Panama, Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

I also work as a guide for Quest Nature Tours, leading tours in several locations. My tour schedule includes Colombia, Borneo, West Papua, Galápagos, Jamaica, and Ethiopia..

I love visiting remote places. Some of my favorite activities include watching bird migration in the autumn on the shores of James Bay, night-hiking in the tropics, picking through a mixed flock of birds in Central or South America, spending time with a population of Eastern Massassaugas at a location I've visited for years, setting up my moth sheet and seeing what curiosities appear, and searching for endemic bird species in far flung locations.

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