Field Notebook Module

Since the age of seven, David Sibley has been watching and drawing birds, traveling throughout North America indulging his love of nature study. This work culminated in the publication of "The Sibley Guide to Birds" in 2000, which became the fastest-selling bird guide ever, and several companion volumes including "The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior" in 2001 and "Sibley's Birding Basics" in 2002. His latest project is a complete guide to the identification of North American Trees, published in 2009. He lives with his family in Concord, Massachusetts.

Mike Powers combined his passions for science, communication, and birding when he joined the Citizen Science program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He started with the Birdhouse Network (now NestWatch), but in 2001 shifted positions to manage the development of the real-time, online checklist program known as eBird. In 2005 Mike shifted to the Conservation Science program to assist in the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. He continues to focus on conservation issues, using acoustics to study nocturnal migrants, as well as species of concern such as Whip-poor-will and Spotted Owl. When not analyzing spectrograms, birding his local patch, or eBirding, Mike is typically absorbed in photography, music, or exploring the outdoors with his wife and daughter. They live outside of Ithaca, NY.

Shawneen Finnegan. Shawneen's artistic parents taught her to draw and paint early in life. As a young adult in the early 1980's she became obsessed with watching birds. Since then she has worn many hats, including artist/illustrator, tour leader and tour manager for WINGS, and Range Data Editor for BirdArea software. Shawneen has served on three different state bird records committees, and is a Nikon Birding ProStaffer. She has traveled widely both at home and abroad. Since leaving her native California she has also lived in the birding Meccas of Cape May, NJ, and Tucson, AZ, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. She continues to meld her artistic talents and love of birds by producing watercolors and scratchboard illustrations that have appeared in private collections, magazines, identification videos, and numerous books and magazine articles. She also enjoys doing pastel pet portraiture. Shawneen recently graduated from Portland State University with a BS in Geography.

Writing Module

Lynn Barber began to watch birds at the age of 7 and has been an active birder most of the years since then. In 2005, she did a Texas big year and broke the previous record for number of bird species seen in Texas in one year with 522 species. In 2008, she tallied 723 bird species in the ABA Area. Her account of her ABA big year was published in 2011 as Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year. While in Texas, she was active in the Fort Worth Audubon Society (president and treasurer) and was president of the Texas Ornithological Society. She became a member of the American Birding Association board in March 2010. In addition to birding, her avocations include nature-photography, painting birds, giving talks about birds and bird-related activities, church volunteer activities, playing the hammered dulcimer, and baking cookies. She is married to David Barber, who is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
 

Ted Floyd is the Editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association. He has published widely on birds and ecological topics. Ted has written more than 125 articles, with contributions to scholarly journals such as Ecology, Oecologia, Animal Behaviour, Journal of Animal Ecology, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution and contributions to popular magazines such as Natural History, Birdwatcher's Digest, and Birding. Ted received a B.A. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Penn State University in 1995. Ted is a frequent speaker at birding festivals and ornithological meetings, and he has led birding trips and workshops throughout North America.
 
 

Rick Wright lives in Tucson and in Vancouver, BC, with his wife, Alison Beringer, and their chocolate Lab, Gellert. A native of southeast Nebraska, Rick studied French, German, Philosophy, and Life Sciences at the University of Nebraska before making a detour to Harvard Law School. He took the Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University in 1990, then spent a dozen years as an academic. Rick and Alison moved to Tucson in 2003, where he founded Aimophila Adventures, a guide service for birders; he also served as editor of the ABA’s newsletter, Winging It, from 2004 to 2008. The Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours from 2008 to 2010, Rick is a widely published writer, a popular lecturer at birding events, and an enthusiastic tour leader in Europe and North America. His time afield is documented in his blog, Aimophila Adventures.

Illustration Module

While working toward his biology and music degrees, Michael L. P. Retter spent most of his free time birding in Mexico. He became so hooked on the birds (and Oaxaca cheese) that his career path after graduation was clear, and he's now a tour leader for Tropical Birding. He's recently ventured into Australia and Micronesia but still spends most of his time guiding anywhere from Canada to Ecuador. When at home in the Midwest, Michael puts his intense interests in taxonomy and distribution to use both as "Sightings" Department Editor and Technical Reviewer for ABA's Birding magazine.

Sophie Webb has drawn and painted wildlife since childhood. The basis of almost all her work is observation and field sketching, combined occasionally with museum specimens; in particular for the field guide plates that she paints. She has traveled as a biologist studying and painting birds from the Amazon to the Arctic and Antarctic. In 1995 she co-authored and illustrated A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. In 2000 she published an award winning children’s book, My Season with Penguins: An Antarctic Journal about studying Adelie Penguins in the Antarctic, where she worked for 5 seasons. Her 2nd children’s book is about seabirds in the Aleutians, Looking for Seabirds: Journal from an Alaskan Voyage. She has worked on numerous cruises as a researcher or naturalist in the Central Pacific, Eastern Tropical Pacific, Atlantic, Antarctic, Aleutians and the Bering Sea and she is a director of Oikonos: Ecosystem Knowledge.

Louise Zemaitis is an artist and naturalist living in Cape May, NJ where she is an Associate Naturalist with the Cape May Bird Observatory. As a tour leader for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, Louise has traveled throughout much of North and South America, and Antarctica. She also enjoys leading birding groups and lecturing at birding festivals. Louise and her husband, Michael O'Brien, have been guiding young birders at birding events and conferences for many years. Louise is also coordinator of the Monarch Monitoring Project in Cape May, compiler of the Cape May Christmas Bird Count, and member of the Cape May Artists' Cooperative. An honors graduate of Temple University's Tyler School of Art, she enjoys working as a freelance artist and her illustrations have been widely published.

Photography Module

Richard Crossley is an internationally acclaimed birder and photographer. He first came to the US from England as a 21-year old and almost immediately became well-known for discovering ‘The Dyke’ at Cape May and identifying passerines flying overhead.

After 20 years hiding in the business world while raising his family, Richard set himself a new goal - to popularize birding and the outdoors through books and multi-media. By making nature more fashionable, he hopes to encourage the youth of today to become the game-changers of tomorrow.

Based on what we now know about the brain and learning, he believes the design of “The Crossley ID Guide” will help people improve their ID skills and change the design of all nature books.

Bill Schmoker's photos appear in magazines, photographic field guides, bird ID cards, newspapers, interpretive signs, web pages, advertisements, corporate logos, and as artist references (www.schmoker.org/BirdPics). He is also a busy blogger, columnist, instructor, speaker and trip leader, and is a Nikon Birding ProStaffer. When not birding, Bill teaches middle school science and enjoys family life with his wife and 5-year old son.

Doug Wechsler is a photographer, author, and Director of VIREO, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University's worldwide collection of bird photographs. Doug's photographs have appeared in hundreds of publications and other media.. He is the author of 22 children's books on nature. His most recent books are Marvels in the Muck: Life in the Salt Marshes and Frog Heaven: Life in a Vernal Pool.

Doug has photographed in wetlands, seashores and forests around the country and tropical forests around the world. He lives with his wife, Debbie Carr, in Philadelphia.

Conservation/Community Module

Jennie Duberstein is the Young Birder Liaison for the ABA. She manages the young birder blog (The Eyrie) and provides support to other young birder programs, including Camp Colorado and the Young Birder of the Year contest. She’s been involved with ABA young birder programs since 1999 as editor of A Bird’s-Eye View, the student newsletter of the ABA, and coordinator the first three young birder conferences. For her day job, Jennie works as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Sonoran Joint Venture, a program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that works to conserve the unique birds and habitats of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. She is also adjunct faculty at the University of Arizona, in the School of the Environment and Natural Resources.

Jeffrey A. Gordon is the president of the American Birding Association. Jeff is also a well-known writer, photographer, tour leader, and naturalist. He is a frequent speaker at various birding and nature festivals. For more information on the ABA and on Jeff, visit www.aba.org