Let’s Meet!
By
Mary and Dickens
RGVBF VOLUNTEER PROFILE: MARY GUSTAFSON
Mary Gustafson is one of those rare lucky people where work and play overlap a great deal. For the past four years she has worked as a bird conservation biologist for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, working as Coordinator for the Rio Grande Joint Venture, a new bird conservation partnership. Mary is Co-Chair of the Field Trip Committee with John Yochum of TPWD’s Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco. Mary ran the Lower Rio Grande Valley Rare Bird Alert hotline for 2 years before asking John to take over for the summer this year.
Mary has been watching birds since she was about 6 years old, largely due to her grandfather’s influence. She got serious about actively seeking birds at 14 when Robert Segedi of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History got her interested in the more scientific side of birding. She’s lived or worked in Ohio, New Jersey, Washington, Ontario, Maryland, and Texas. Mary was part of a team that won the World Series of Birding “a long time ago” and organized the team that won the “Big Sit!” of the Great Texas Birding Classic in 2009. She still holds the record for a big year in Delaware.
Bird Banding
South Padre Island Pelagic-Summer '09
Mary loves nothing more than a bird identification puzzle to work on. One of Mary’s real passions is pelagic birding, and she loves to go out on the ocean and see what turns up. In her free time when she’s not working or birding she has three horses that she finds time to ride.
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