Our team

Prof. János OLÁH

The founder of SAKERTOURS. He was also the managing director of the company until 2006. Author of over 350 scientific papers and 20 books as well as many feasibility studies on zoology, mineral cycling, landscape ecology and habitat restoration. He became a keen birdwatcher as late as 1993, but has visited many countries in all continents with his son also named János. However, his main interest is caddish flies and since he retired in 2010 he devotes all his time to writing and caddish fly taxonomy.

Dr. Marianna OLÁH

Marianna OLÁH, sister of János Oláh joined Sakertour from the very beginning helping her father first and later her brother with the office and managing work of the company. She also graduated from the University of Debrecen and completed her PhD at the Department of Ecology. Her thesis work was on Denitrification in the Upper Tisza River valley. She worked at the Ecology Department of University Debrecen and the Hortobágy National Park Directorate for 18 years. In 2014  she moved to the UK where her husband, András works as a Hystopatholgist.  At present, she works and lives both in the UK and in Debrecen, Hungary. She has a daughter, Alexandra, and a newborn granddaughter, Luca.

Phone number: +44-7400-636465 (UK) and +36-30-4888923 (Hungary)

Zoltán BACZÓ

Zoltán joined Sakertour officially back in 2008 when the hide photography section was launched in Romania. He has started bird watching and nature protection interest when he was a child than he soon started bird and nature photography as well. Zoltan living with his family in Transylvania in a hungarian inhabited town called Székelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Scuiesc). Her wife is Ildikó and has two young boys, Csanád and Bálint. He speaks good English and has an intimate knowledge of Romania`s birdlife and also has an excellent photography skill to guide you in Romania. Zoltán currently leading Danube Delta birdwatching tours, Transylvania wildlife photo tours and Danube Delta photo tours plus custom photo tours of all kind in Romania. He also has extensive knowledge of the birding sites in Hungary where he also lead tours.

Phone number: +40-740-572215 (Romania)

Zoltán ECSEDI

Zoltán is one of the most experienced leaders of SAKERTOURS. He graduated at the University of Debrecen, Department of Environmental Management. His thesis work was on The Ecology of Avocet in the Hortobágy. He speaks perfect English and began birding when he was only 13 years old. In the late 1980s he educated birders of his home town, Balmazújváros where a young generation of knowledgeable birders emerged with his help. His field ornithological work started on the steppes of the Hortobágy National Park and later he became acquainted with nearly all bird habitats in Hungary. Zoltán has also participated actively in several nature protection and habitat restoration projects. He is also the founder and leader of the Hortobágy Environmental Association, one of the recent activities of which has been to restore and create wetland habitats for shorebirds breeding in or migrating through the Hortobágy. He was a member of the Hungarian Rarity Committee. Zoltán started his birdwatching trips in 1992, and has visited many countires around the world. He became a regular tour leader in Hungary in 1993 and has led over a hundred tours for Sakertour ever since. In 1995 he founded the Hungarian Society of Field Ornithologists and they established the Hungarian Birdline. He is conducting research on the Hortobágy shorebirds and he is the author of seven scientific papers as well as editor and co-author of the handbook The Birds of the Hortobágy. Zoltán is married to Regina and has three daughters named Ajsa, Aletta and Ankissza. They live in Debrecen.

Phone number: +36-30-3617773 (Hungary)

József KECSKÉS

József joined SAKERTOURS in 2013 after graduating at Debrecen University, and he is a full time staff member. He works in the hide photography section and most of our photography guests will get to know him. He is a core member of the transportation team in the early mornings but he also does a lot of maintenance and development on the hides. He is also an eagle-eyed birder and a member of the young birder generation from Balmazújváros town. He started birding in a very young age (11) and built up a superb knowledge of the Hortobágy region and the Zemplén Hills. He also does guiding for our birdwatcher guests when he has some time off from the photography section. During his university studies at the Department of Nature Conservation he completed his BsC thesis on ‘The eating habits of the rollers, around Balmazújváros’ and later his MsC thesis on ‘The importance of the cemeteries in the nature conservation’. József is also one of our best tree climbers and has been helping our continuous and successful nest-boxing project with his superb skills. He is also a member of the Hortobágy Environmental Association and works as a volunteer, spending his free time in nature too. He lives in Balmazújváros and married to Zsuzsa and they have two young children József and Zsuzsa.

Phone number: +36-30-7231317 (Hungary)

Márton MOLNÁR

Márton joined our team in 2023 as a birdwatching guide. He has been working in the Hortobágy National Park for a few years and he also know all keen birders of the region. He got in touch with birds at a very young age when he was visiting bird ringing camps. Soon he realized, there is no way back, and he became a birder! Since then, he is an active birdwatcher, mostly around the Mátra hills in Northern Hungary. In his youth he spent most of his free time with birdwatching around his home village, Somoskőújfalu where he built up a remarkable knowledge on the Hungarian ‘upland’ avifauna. He graduated at the University of Debrecen as nature conservation engineer. Then he worked for Hortobágy National Park as a tour guide for a few years and gained experience of waterfowl. Since 2016 he has been working as a national park ranger in the Mátra hills where his main activity is protection of threatened bird species like woodpeckers, Ural Owl, Eurasian Pygmy Owl or Rock Bunting. He is active in researches aiming conservation of birds, especially in monitoring and ringing programmes. His favourite species is White-backed Woodpecker and he is the national coordinator of White-backed Woodpecker working group within MME Birdlife Hungary. Besides his jobs he visited several countries within the Western Palearctic for birdwatching. The Danube Delta and its vast lagoon system is amongst his favourite places, and he has been leading some of our tours to this area but he is also happy to help out in any birding tours in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia or in fact anywhere in the Carpathian Basin.

Tamás NAGY

Tamás has been guiding for SAKERTOURS since 1995 although he had a considerable gap in guiding when he was working for the Kiskunság National Park. However since 2013 Tamás decided to start again guiding of birdwatching tours. Tamás was interested in birds from a very early age and spent most of his time on the various wetlands around Szeged town in Southern Hungary. He finished his studies at the University of Szeged, Department of Ecology. His MsC thesis was on the migration of shorebirds on the Soda Lakes of Southern Hungary. He was also member of the Hungarian Rarity Committee for ten years. Later he has worked as a warden in the Kiskunság National Park for 10 years. Now he is working in an Eco-Village in Southern Hungary. He is a very experienced birder and guide who travelled extensively in the Western Palearctic as well as the Middle East. Tamás speaks perfect German and nowadays he is the leader for all our German-speaking groups.

Gábor SIMAY

He joined SAKERTOURS in 2005 and has guided over twenty groups since then as a professional tour leader. He has been interested in birds and nature conservation since his first years in primary school. During his studies at the University of Debrecen he deepened his knowledge on birds, carried out research on ground-nesting birds of the Hortobágy National Park, spending most of his time in the field. His favourite area is the Bihar Plain and the Hortobágy. In 2008 he started to work for the Hortobágy National Park as a full time warden in the Bihar Plain area. He is also a member and currently one of the secretary of the Hungarian Rarity Committee. He frequently visits other parts of Hungary as well as many sites of the Carpathian Basin to study birds. As a keen birdwatcher and photographer, he has visited several different Western Palearctic countries (e.g. Turkey, Spain, Egypt, Jordan), as well as Namibia, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and India. He speaks perfect English and some German. Gábor is married to Tünde and has three children named Krisztián, Gábor and Tünde. They live in Földes.

Phone number: +36-30-5239198 (Hungary)

János TAR

János has been guiding for SAKERTOURS since 1994 in the Hortobágy area. He is also a member of the young birder generation from Balmazújváros who were educated by Zoli about twenty years ago. János is working as a full time warden in the Hortobágy National Park since 1995. He contributes to several LIFE projects but his personal ambition is to keep track of the Lesser White-fronted Geese on passage in the Hortobágy and he is a well-known expert of the species in Hungary. He is a keen photographer too and has an intimate knowledge of his local area where some of our hides can be found. He has done volunteer work for several NGOs such as the Hortobágy Environmental Association and assisted in many surveys. He contributes to bird ringing projects like the Spoonbill, Pygmy Cormorant and Caspian Gull colour ringing programme. He has published papers on various bird species and was a co-author of The Birds of the Hortobágy handbook. He is currently the top lister in Hungary with over 355 species and has found several new birds for Hungary and many more to the Hortobágy area. He is also a member of the Hungarian Rarity Committee. János has also travelled in the Western Palearctic to watch birds. He has been to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Finland, Norway, Spain, Morocco, Greece, Turkey and Georgia. János is married to Izabella and has a young daughter and a son named Orsolya and Gergő. They live in Balmazújváros.

Phone number: +36-30-9636310 (Hungary)

Tamás ZALAI

Tamás joined SAKERTOURS officially in 2007 when the hide photography section was launched, but has been helping our company since 1994. He is a graduate of the University of Debrecen, Department of Ecology where he finished his studies in 1997. He wrote his graduate thesis on The monitoring and protection of the birdlife in the Heves region. He speaks perfect English and began birding when he was a child. After his university studies he worked for the Körös-Maros National Park and later moved to the Hortobágy National Park where he is currently working as a regional manager. His main research area is the Tisza Lake where he has led and participated in several projects related to birds and their protection. After the cyanide pollution hit the Tisza in 2000 he conducted several monitoring surveys to asses the damage. He has contributed to several LIFE projects (Imperial Eagle, Red-footed Falcon, Saker) but his main interest is to protect the breeding birds of the vast agricultural fields in his home patch (Heves Plain and Jászság). Tamás has an intimate knowledge of his local area where some of our hides can be found. He is a member of several conservationist NGOs and he was the secretary of the Hungarian Rarity Committee. Now he lives in the middle of the Hortobágy National Park and organizing the bird monitoring work in the national park from 2011. He has been one of the editors and authors of the recently published and most up-to-date Hungarian bird checklist titled An Annotated list of the Birds of Hungary. Tamás has also travelled in the Western Palearctic to watch birds. He has been to Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Finland, Norway and Turkey. Meanwhile he also began to take an active interest in watching birds of more exotic places and since 2000 he has visited many Asian countries such as India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and New-Guinea. His trips abroad also took him to other parts of the world for example to Canada, Venezuela, Peru, South-Africa, Namibia, Ethiopia and Australia. Tamás is married to Adrienn and they have three children, named Csanád, Kincső and Villő. They live in Balmazújváros.

Phone number: +36-30-5838689 (Hungary)