

Estevão Santos
Estevão F. Santos is a young ornithologist and zealous naturalist from central Brazil. Born in the state of Goiás, in the heart of the Cerrado biome, he now lives in Brasília, from where his expeditions are constantly departing.
Despite his young age, Estevão has been passionate about nature of his homeland since he “first opened his eyes”, as he affectively says. Having spent his early childhood immersed in books about the land, plants and animals, and listening to stories of the elders, he began studying birds of the Cerrado when he was only 8 years old.
At 12, he reported the results of his observations in a 30-minute lecture in an ornithology congress, after which several other talks were presented by him in scientific meetings around Brazil. At 13, Estevão published his first paper in the Brazilian Journal of Ornithology, and at 14, he spent several months working at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where he helped developing the databases of Brazilian birds for Merlin Bird ID and eBird, for which he also works as a volunteer reviewer.
Since then, Estevão has been the leader of a number of field trips and tours to poorly known parts of the Cerrado, where he is frequently finding rare species. Many of his discoveries have been widely reported, and he now accounts over 10 years of field experience, 1,200 species on eBird and nearly a dozen articles published about Brazilian birds.
His extensive knowledge not only about the birds’ vocalizations and natural history, as well as of the whole elements of the landscape, combined with his contagious passion about the field, have made Estevão an experienced guide in the Cerrado, a region birds have turned him intimate of.
