Terje Kolaas has been an active bird watcher, ringer and photographer since 1989. He is educated as a nature conservationist and supervisor. Besides guiding, he currently works with the birdwatching products for Din Tur and he teaches bird identification at Nord-Trøndelag University College. He also runs the birding tour company, Northern Birding, in addition to being the county chairman of the Norwegian Ornithological Society in Nord-Trøndelag and a member of the regional rarity commite. Since 2000 Terje has been involved in a genetics project under the direction of NTNU (The Norwegian University of Science and Technology) studying house sparrow metapopulations on islands along the coast of Helgeland in Nordland County.