Tim Birkhead is an academic and a Fellow of the Royal Society. His professional interests span ornithology, evolution and reproductive biology, as well as the history of science. He is known for his work on both on the mating systems of birds and the history of ornithology. Tim received the Elliot Coues Medal, for outstanding and innovative contributions to ornithological research in 2010; the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour medal for outstanding contributions to the study of animal behaviour in 2012; The Godman-Salvin Medal, for 'distinguished ornithological work' by the British Ornithologists' Union in 2016, the Founders' Medal of the Society for the Study of the History of Natural History for contributions to the history and bibliography of natural history in 2016. In 2014 Tim won the Zoological Society of London's Silver Medal for contributions to the understanding and appreciation of Zoology. He won the Eisenmann Medal of the Linnaean Society of New York, for excellence in ornithology and encouragement of the amateur in 2015; the Stephen Jay Gould Prize, for increasing public understanding of evolutionary biology (from the Society of Evolution) in 2017; and that same year the Zoological Society of London's Clarivate Analytics Award, for Communicating Zoology to a general audience for his book The Most Perfect Thing. Tim was elected as an FRS in 2004. Tim has written or edited 15 books, including four popular science titles published by Bloomsbury - The Wisdom of Birds (2008), Bird Sense (2012); The Most Perfect Thing (2017) and The Wonderful Mr Willughby (Bloomsbury 2018).

He is one of the four founders of New Networks for Nature--an annual festival that brings together scientists, writers, poets, artists and musicians to celebrate our relationship with the natural world.