Brian Finch

Brian Finch is a UK-born, Kenya-naturalised tour leader, taxonomist, and field-guide author who has been working in East Africa for several decades. He left a banking and credit-management career in London for safari guiding, spent twenty years based in the Maasai Mara, and now lives in Nairobi. He is co-author of the Princeton Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa, the Princeton Field Guide to the Birds of New Guinea, the photographic Birds of East Africa with Adam Scott Kennedy, and 100 Common Bird Calls in East Africa, and he produced the long-running eGuide to the Birds of East Africa app, which collected the regional bird vocalisations into a single reference. Finch is also a working scientist — his name appears on peer-reviewed taxonomic revisions and species descriptions for African birds. He served for ten years as a director of the Kenya Professional Safari Guides Association and chaired its Examination Committee, the body that sets the bronze and silver guide examinations. That makes him one of the rare tour leaders whose involvement in Kenyan guiding is institutional as well as commercial. He leads tours for WINGS Birding Tours — the Tucson-based international operator — including their annual Kenya November tour from Samburu to the Maasai Mara, the Uganda Shoebills-to-Gorillas tour, and Madagascar departures. Visitors who want a Kenya tour led by an author of the standard regional field guide tend to end up here.