Oliver James was born in Berkeley in 1991. He started watching birds in his backyard on Colusa Avenue at age five and never turned back. Since then he has competed in national birding tournaments, worked as a birding tour guide, and joined ornithological research teams from Peru to Alaska. He graduated from Berkeley High School in 2009 and Wesleyan University in 2014 with a degree in biology and environmental studies. James is also the author of A Field Guide to the Birds of Wesleyan (Wesleyan University Press, 2014).
