Thijs Valkenburg

Thijs Valkenburg is a Dutch ornithologist and environmental and forestry technician, born and raised in the Algarve. Trained in Forestry and Environmental Expertise in the Netherlands, he has been active in Portugal since the late 1990s, focusing primarily on the study and conservation of birds.

He has participated in several scientific projects, including the Arenaria Project, the Atlas of Breeding Birds in Mainland Portugal, and the Atlas of Wintering and Migratory Birds. In recent years, he has expanded his fieldwork into entomology, documenting the diversity of insects in the Algarve. Among his contributions is the discovery of a specimen that was later described as Attalus (Attalus) miricauda, a new beetle species to science, in 2024.