Leaders
The Rio Grande Birding Festival, one of the longest standing birding festivals in North America, offers field trips to spot many species of birds that can be found nowhere else. Plus these trips are led by some of the finest birders—they know the birds and where to find them and are dedicated to you having the best time possible. In addition to all of the birding fare, south Texas is well known in November as the premier location in North America for butterfly watching and during this time many rare strays from Mexico regularly appear. Every year, I look forward to being a part of it all.
~Jon Dunn, author National Geographic Field Guide/ leader Wings Birding Tours
DIANN BALLESTEROS’ love of gardening dates to her early childhood in east Texas. Both her mother and grandmother were avid gardeners. She was introduced to native plants while a member of the Arroyo Colorado Audubon Society of South Texas. She now spends much of her time learning about and caring for the unique plants of the Rio Grande Valley. Growing native plants in her yard has also led to an interest in butterflies and the plants they need to thrive. Diann retired after teaching in Harlingen for twenty-seven years. Diann is a board member of the local Native Plant Society, treasurer of the Port Isabel – South Padre Island Shell Club, and a member of the Rio Grande Valley Chapter of Texas Master Naturalist.
JESSIE BARRY’s passion for birds was sparked at the age of ten in her hometown of Rochester, New York. For the past several years, she served as an editor for ABA’s student newsletter, A Bird’s-Eye View. Jessie is currently attending the University of Washington, pursuing a career in birding and ornithology. Besides birding, she enjoys drawing, playing tennis and kayaking. A talented young artist, her work appears in this year RGV Birding Festival Registration Brochure.
BOB BEHRSTOCK lived in Houston for 22 years, first as a founder and Vice-president of Peregrine Tours, then as a senior birding tour leader for Wings, Inc. While living in Texas, he participated in site assessments for five of the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail and Great Texas Wildlife Trail maps, the World Birding Center, and birding trails in Virginia, Maryland, Kansas and West Texas. During the last eight years, he has been a presenter and field trip leader for birding, dragonfly, and butterfly festivals and workshops in Texas, Arizona, and California. Bob co-authored Birds of Houston, Galveston, and the Upper Texas Coast, and the Upper Texas Coast volume of Finding Birds on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. Additionally, he has authored or co-authored nearly 50 popular and scientific papers concerning fishes, birds, dragonflies, and butterflies in the U.S. and Latin America and recently authored a guide to Southwestern dragonflies. He now lives in Southeastern Arizona, photographing and continuing to lead a variety of natural history tours. Please visit: http://www.naturewideimages.com
GAVIN BIEBER developed a very early interest in birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles and has steadily pursued these interests while growing up in British Columbia, Virginia Beach, Great Britain and Denmark. Gavin graduated from the University of Victoria with a degree in Biology and a minor in Environmental Studies. He studied for one year at the University of Southern Mississippi where he collaborated with their Migratory Bird Study Group. Gavin has worked as a field assistant on a variety of ornithological research projects including studies of the wintering ecology of Henslow’s Sparrows, the breeding biology of Interior Least Terns, and the stopover ecology of Swainson’s Thrushes and Gray Catbirds. In addition he conducted point counts for the National Park Service in Arizona and New Mexico. He has traveled extensively through Western Europe, North and West Africa, Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Mexico, the U.S., Canada, and Alaska.
JEFF BOUTON has been active as a research biologist and professional tour leader for over 25 years. As a professional research biologist, Jeff worked across the country and finally landed in Alaska, where he guided professionally for 6 years. He served as a contributing author for the ABA Bird-finding Guides to Alaska, as well as Florida where he now resides. For the past five years, Jeff has worked as the Product Specialist to the Birder/Naturalists Markets for Leica Sport Optics. In this capacity, Jeff travels the country leading trips and presenting on a variety of wildlife topics at bird and nature festivals throughout the year. He writes many feature articles on birds and birding for various publications including a regular column in WildBird magazine summarizing birding adventures with his 8 year-old son, Austin.
BILL CLARK is a photographer, author, and lecturer and has over 35 years experience working with birds of prey, including 5 years as Director of NWF’s Raptor Information Center. He has published numerous articles on raptor subjects; has traveled extensively world-wide studying, observing, and photographing raptors; and regularly leads raptor and birding tours and workshops, both home and abroad, with his company, Raptours. Bill has written a raptor field guide for Europe, and is writing two others for Africa and for Mexico and Central America. He is a coauthor of the Photographic Guide to North American Raptors and the completely revised Peterson series guide, Hawks. Unfortunately, unable to join us in 2009. However, look forward to his return in 2010!
CAMERON COX discovered birds at the age of thirteen, and has been an avid birder ever since. As a professional bird bum, he has worked on various bird related projects around the country. He has spent two falls working for Cape May Bird Observatory and two summers working for Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. For several months, he was studying bird migration on an oil production platform in the Gulf of Mexico for Louisiana State University. Most recently, Cameron has been involved with Oldbird, a nonprofit research organization studying bird migration through acoustic monitoring. When not birding, he is probably looking at butterflies or some other aspect of natural history.
JIM DANZENBAKER feels that he wasted the first six years of his life by not discovering birding until then! Originally from coastal New Jersey, Jim had easy access to both Cape May and Brigantine and then migrated to the west coast. In California, he guides for Shearwater Journeys bird/whale watching trips from Monterey, Santa Cruz, Bodega Bay, and Fort Bragg and has progressed from birding most of the lower 48 states to building a solid background in the tropics. He has been a freelance tour guide for the last 10 years with experience in Ecuador, Panama, Venezeula, Bolivia, and to the far southern latitudes as a guide/lecturer on several Falkland Islands-South Georgia-Antarctica birdwatching/photography expeditions. His intense interest in birding and ecological issues and his dedication to natural history have given Jim a willingness to enthusiastically share information and knowledge to tour/festival participants. Jim currently lives in Battle Ground, Washington.
PAT DeWENTER is a “Winter Texan” from Minnesota and avid birder who has been actively birding in the Rio Grande Valley for 13 years. She volunteered at Santa Ana NWR for many years, both in the visitor center and leading birdwalks with her husband Bob for 6 years. This past year she volunteered to help with the many bird walks at Estero Llano Grande, escorting people into the so-called Forbidden Zone. She has been a co-leader on trips with the McAllen Nature Festival and with the RGV Festival for the past 3 years.
JON DUNN’s list of accomplishments is a Who’s Who in Birding: Author of the Peterson Field Guide to Warblers, co-author both of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America and Birding Essentials. The list goes on to include Birds of Southern California, plus writer and narrator for videos on gulls and hummingbirds. Jon’s first visit to the Valley was in 1970, and he’s been here many times since, enjoying its raptors, rarities, and admiring the efforts to preserve habitat, despite an exploding population. Favorite bird? Cerulean Warbler.
KIM ECKERT, with over 45 years of birding experience throughout the U. S. and Canada, has been guiding birders and teaching bird ID classes for 30 of those years. Since the 1980s, he has led tours for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours – especially to Texas, a favorite and frequent winter destination, as evidenced by his attendance at this festival for 12 consecutive years. He has authored four editions of the book A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota, has operated the Minnesota Birding Weekends program of birding tours for nearly 25 years, formerly chaired Minnesota’s bird records committee, and for 20 years served as Naturalist at Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve in Duluth. He has resided in Duluth, Minnesota since 1977 – winters included!
MIKE FREIBERG grew up in Philadelphia, PA, where his family introduced him to the world of bird-watching. He attended Iowa State University where he earned his B.S. in Animal Ecology and spent his summers during college as a biological technician, monitoring breeding birds for Point Reyes Bird Observatory in Eastern Oregon, and also four seasons in Black Hills, SD, working for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. As his passion for birding grew he decided to travel Latin America; he has spent time in Mexico and Venezuela and a great deal of time in Brazil. One of his most memorable birding experiences was the six months spent in Northeast Brazil performing research on a new species of bird called the Araripe Manakin. Mike is the Nikon Sport Optics Birding Market Specialist.
RICHARD GIBBONS has worked as a field biologist for the past twelve years in various parts of the Americas. He earned his wings working on avian productivity and survivorship projects, hawk migration, Andean hummingbirds, and Texas colonial waterbirds. Richard is the Coordinator for the Louisiana Bird Resource Center, a fledgling organization within the LSU Museum of Natural Science. He is also a PhD student at LSU studying Tropical Ornithology.
JEFFREY GORDON is a writer and naturalist who lives in Lewes, Delaware. He serves as Field Editor for Bird Watcher’s Digest, and is a frequent speaker at various birding and nature festivals around the U.S. A lifelong nature enthusiast, Jeff has worked as an interpretive naturalist at national parks including Yosemite and Acadia, and at Texas‘ Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. He spent 12 years leading birding tours worldwide for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. He authored 11 of the chapters in the 2005 book Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges. For more information on Jeff’s activities, visit http://www.jeffreyagordon.com.
MARY GUSTAFSON is co-Chair of the Field Trip Committee for the Rio Grande Birding Festival. She hails from Ohio and has always loved birds and horses. She had to decide which career path to follow and eventually picked birds. Mary relocated to Maryland after college, where she worked on contaminants in wildlife and in the bird banding office. While in Maryland she set the Delaware Big Year record – twice. Mary is a pelagic-o-phile and still leads for See Life Paulagics when time allows. Mary moved to Texas in 2005 to work on bird conservation planning in south and west Texas and northeast Mexico . She lives in Mission near her three horses.
MARTIN HAGNE was born and raised on the Swedish west coast, where he spent his summers on a small island within the extensive granite island archipelago. His grandfather instilled in Martin a love for nature at an early age. Martin moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in 1979. He found the Valley’s native landscape unique and quite beautiful, and slowly turned that focus towards wildlife viewing and conservation concerns. Birding became a serious love in the early 90’s when he spotted both an Aplomado Falcon and a Golden Eagle in Willacy County. Martin is currently the Executive Director of the Valley Nature Center in Weslaco. He sits on several nature related boards and committees, leads nature field trips, conducts bird surveys, still has time to volunteer for several environmental organizations and wildlife entities. Birding, butterflying, odonate and nature viewing, as well as a big interest in native plants, has become a great passion for Martin.
RUTH HOYT is a naturalist and photographer who lives in the Rio Grande Valley. Ruth has taught photography workshops for companies such as Kodak and agencies like the National Park Service. Ruth’s work has been featured at the Smithsonian Institution and in publications by National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy, Birder’s World, American Birding Association’s Birding Magazine, Texas Monthly, and more. Ruth is a real treasure to have in the Rio Grande Valley and learning photography from her is a great opportunity for beginning and advanced photographers alike. You can check out some of her work at http://www.ruthhoyt.com.
HUCK HUTCHENS is an avid local birder and a member of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival Field Trip Committee. Huck enjoyed nature as a child in the woods and rivers at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. After retiring from DuPont in 1993, he spent a winter in Harlingen and his birding interests became magnified with the diversity of birds in the Rio Grande Valley. Traveling around the country in a motorhome for the next nine years, he listed birds in nearly every state but wintered in the Rio Grande Valley. Huck volunteered leading nature and bird walks at Valley Nature Center and local RV Parks during the winter months. Huck moved to Weslaco permanently in 2004 and became extremely involved in Estero Llano Grande State Park as a naturalist, interpreter, bird guide and park host. You’ll find Huck leading bird trips at Estero Llano Grande all winter – and if it’s a winter like 2008 with Rose-throated Becard, Blue Bunting, Tropical Parula, and an exotic Black-throated Magpie Jay in the park, more than 20 trips in some weeks!
STEVE INGRAHAM is the Birding and Observation Product Specialist for Carl Zeiss Sports Optics. He is actively involved in product design and management at Zeiss, representing the needs of birders and naturalists, and at festivals and conventions all around the country (and world) where he represents Zeiss to birders and to the birding community as a whole. Before Zeiss, Steve was the editor of the Tools of the Trade section in Birding Magazine (American Birding Association), and editor/publisher of Better View Desired.
KEVIN KARLSON is an accomplished birder, professional tour leader and wildlife photographer who has published numerous articles on bird identification and natural history for an assortment of magazines and journals. A former photo editor for North American Birds, he currently writes the Birder’s ID column for Wild Bird Magazine. Kevin is a co-author of The Shorebird Guide (Houghton Mifflin Co. 2006) and just completed a new book for the Roger Tory Peterson Reference series at Houghton Mifflin Co. called Birding by Impression. As the sole ornithologist for Cornell’s DVD Birds of North America, Kevin prepared photos and wrote captions for over 2600 bird images. He is a regular presence at numerous Bird and Nature festivals around North America, where he gives keynote presentations and workshops on bird identification and natural history; and leads field trips to a variety of locations. Kevin has participated in the last 10 RGV Festivals as a keynote speaker; workshop presenter; and field trip leader, and considers this festival one of the best in North America for bird diversity, unique bird species, and quality of field trip leaders.
TOM LANGSCHIED is a research scientist at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Science from Purdue University in 1988 and his Masters of Science degree in Range and Wildlife Management from Texas A&M University–Kingsville in 1994. That year, Tom began working for King Ranch, developing and leading a world class nature tour program. In the summer of 2005, Tom rejoined the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute as a research associate to coordinate the South Texas Wintering Birds Program, a citizen science project. Besides birds, he also enjoys butterfly and dragonfly watching.
BEN LIZDAS has been an avid nature lover as far back as he can remember. With a background in botany and restoration ecology, Ben discovered the diversity of Wisconsin’s grassland birds while doing restoration work on Wisconsin’s prairies and savannahs. At that point he was hooked. He now spends his days as an optics consultant for Eagle Optics out of Middleton Wisconsin and travels to birding events throughout the country.
BRAD McKINNEY is the co-author of A Birder’s Guide to the Rio Grande Valley and author of A Checklist of Lower Rio Grande Valley Birds. He currently teaches high school science classes at the South Texas Academy of Medical Technology and works part-time as a birding guide for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. Brad especially enjoys birding in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and deepwater pelagics. He has conducted Birding 101 workshops for several years, and is a past field trip chairman for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival.
CHRIS MERKORD is an avian ecologist at the University of Missouri. His research focuses on the distribution and natural history of Andean birds, the structure and composition of bird communities, and the ecology of animal movement. After 5 years of field work, Chris is currently writing his dissertation on the altitudinal migration of birds in southeastern Peru, and planning future research in South America and eastern Africa. In addition to his research activities, Chris manages the website for the American Ornithologists’ Union and leads tours for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. Chris has been an avid naturalist since childhood. Family vacations nurtured a keen interest in the natural world, a fire fanned by a scholarship that sent Chris to a VENT camp for young birders at the age of 15. A 5th generation Texan, Chris enjoys nature photography, disc golf, dancing, and keeping up with the Texas music scene.
CHRISTINA MILD has led nature tours for Weslaco’s Valley Nature Center, Arroyo Colorado Audubon Society and RGV Texas Master Naturalists. She has done extensive research on over 250 locally-native plants over a five-year span of writing weekly columns for the Valley Morning Star. Mild volunteers at Harlingen’s World Birding Center site on the Arroyo Colorado, formerly known as Hugh Ramsey Nature Park. Revegetation, control of exotic grasses and creation of interpretive signage are facets of that work. Mild’s knowledge of native species includes their historic and medicinal use and pointers for using them in wildlife-attracting landscapes.
DEREK MUSCHALEK is a native Texan and cattle rancher, living in Yorktown. He has been actively birding for over 30 years but shifted his attention to botany and butterflies during the past 15 years. He helped identify over 1000 wildflowers in Dewitt County-named the “Wildflower Capitol of Texas” by the Texas Legislature. He serves as a guide for many nature festivals throughout Texas and has led birding and butterfly trips to Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Southeast Arizona,and the Florida Everglades.
MICHAEL O’BRIEN is a freelance artist, author, and VENT tour leader living in Cape May, New Jersey. He has traveled extensively throughout North and Central America and has a passionate interest in migration, bird vocalizations, and field identification. At home in Cape May, Michael serves as an Associate Naturalist with Cape May Bird Observatory for whom he conducts numerous workshops, writes a monthly ID column and photo quiz (see http://www.birdcapemay.org), and, for many years, conducted a fall songbird migration count. He is co-author of The Shorebird Guide, Flight Calls of Migratory Birds, and America’s 100 Most Wanted Birds. His illustrations have been widely published including in National Geographic’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America and the new Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. Michael also has an intense interest in butterflies and leads several “Birds & Butterflies” tours with his wife, Louise Zemaitis.
KYLE O’HAVER is a Park Interpreter at Estero Llano Grande State Park, the Weslaco wing of the World Birding Center. He is a recent addition to Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. Kyle received his BS in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism from the University of Missouri and has found his calling as a Natural Resource Interpreter. Most of his life has been spent in the countryside of north Missouri where he was born and raised chasing turkeys through the woods. An ornithology class at MU got Kyle interested in learning to identify birds. Kyle is a new and young birder in the LRGV with just under two years of “valley” birding under his belt but he is quickly honing his skills to be a great birder.
JAY PACKER began birding at the age twelve and hasn’t stopped since. He has traveled pretty much everywhere in Texas in search of birds, including the Rio Grande Valley more times than he can remember or count. He also has birded internationally on a number of occasions, including Costa Rica, Ecuador, and much of Mexico. He is currently finishing up a master’s degree in biology, where he studied community ecology of the birds in the Davis Mountains of west Texas. In addition to the great birds, he loves the birding festival because he gets to help others enjoy the beauty of the world around them.
MICHAEL RETTER leads tours in North, Middle, and South America for Tropical Birding. Between tours, he bases himself in his native Midwest, where he paints, photographs, and writes about birds. His intense interests in distribution and taxonomy (and grammatical pedantry) are put to work as Technical Reviewer and “Sightings” Department Editor for Birding. He also runs GBNA, the continent’s email list for GLBT birders. Michael currently resides in West Lafayette, Indiana.
JUSTIN RINK has been birding since the age of 15. His interest was sparked when a bird feeder was introduced to the backyard in 1994. He is a nomad and has extensively birded his “home states” including Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, and most recently Nebraska. His travels have taken him to Latin America including three months in Costa Rica and many corners of Mexico. He spent a summer doing field research for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory in the Black Hills of SD. He is an all-around naturalist who has spent time in that profession in Northeast Florida, Costa Rica, as well as Wisconsin. He also does free-lance birding tours and avidly video-tapes avifauna. He currently works as a “tree and shrub guy” at a local nursery in Omaha, Nebraska.
ROY J. RODRIGUEZ is a lifelong Texan, hunter and fisherman, Roy is a Natural Resource Interpreter and Birdwatching Guide working across the US & Mexico. His passion for bird ecology and environmental education has taken him from the Arctic Circle in Barrow, Alaska to the shores of South Korea on the Yellow Sea. Roy strives to foster awareness and appreciation of the environment in the culturally and economically diverse communities of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. He is a Charter member of the LRGV Chapter of Texas Master Naturalists, Canoe Guide on the Rio Grande, Lead Instructor for the National Hispanic Environmental Council Scholarship Institutes and Tour Operator for MexBirds, a small company dedicated to “Economic Sustainability through Birding” in Mexico.
WILLIE SEKULA has been birding for over 30 years. He became interested in birds growing up on a farm in south-central Texas, checking out Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds of Texas from his school library and sneaking it out so his peers wouldn’t know of his interest in birds. Later, in college, he joined the Travis Audubon Society and eventually ended up under the wing of Ed Kutac. For a number of years, Willie has served as sub-regional editor/regional editor for American Birds, Field Notes, and North American Birds, and has also served 3 terms on the Texas Bird Records Committee. Nuts about the tropics, Willie travels widely throughout Latin America for both birds and butterflies, and just recently returned from a month in Columbia. Favorite bird? Hudsonian Godwit.
MARK SHEUERMAN had over 100 species on his bird life list by the age of eight and thirty-some-odd years later, and in pursuit of his passion, he has birded in 10 countries and 5 continents. As a Texas native, he has considerable experience with Texas birds including birds of the Rio Grande Valley. Mark loves to share his passion with others and volunteers to lead field trips for several Texas bird festivals and conferences.
BRIAN SULLIVAN, Project Leader for eBird at Cornell, has conducted fieldwork on birds throughout North America for the past 17 years. Birding travels, photography, and field projects have taken him to Central and South America, to Antarctica, the Arctic and across North America. He has written and consulted on various books, popular, and scientific literature on North American birds. Research interests include closing the gap between science and birding. He is also a project leader for the Avian Knowledge Network, photographic editor of the Birds of North America Online, and photographic editor for the journal North American Birds. You can email him at bls42@cornell.edu.
CLAY TAYLOR began birding in 1975 while attending college in Rochester, NY. In the 1980s, he was a National Audubon Society chapter President, served on CT Rare Records Committee, edited Field Notes for the Connecticut Warbler, banded raptors in Connecticut under Fred Sibley of Yale-Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT. Clay founded the Rochester Hawk Banding Project in Rochester, NY in 1984, which became Braddock Bay Raptor Research. Has led nature tours for National Audubon Society, Connecticut Audubon Society, and Wonder Bird Tours. In 1994 co-founded the Connecticut Butterfly Association and served as founding President. Presently employed as Naturalist Markets Field Coordinator for Swarovski Optik North America, Cranston, RI.
KENT TAYLOR began birding on the Upper Texas Coast in 1982 and began participating in organized birding events such as Birdathons, Christmas Bird Counts, etc. Moving to Corpus Christi in 1995, Kent found himself in a true birding ‘Mecca‘ where he began studying abundance, distribution, and calls of South Texas birds. Kent served as compiler for the Corpus Christi Christmas Bird count as well as running the Coastal Bend Rare Bird Alert for a few years. Kent is still an active birder in the Coastal Bend and Rio Grande Valley as his work allows and leads a few tours in both places.
CHRIS WOOD is a project leader of eBird and the Avian Knowledge Network at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Chris has led birding tours throughout much of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central American and the Caribbean and continues to lead a couple trips each year for WINGS Birding Tours. A native of Colorado, Chris has been birding all over the globe ever since he figured out it was easier to find birds than it was to find dinosaur fossils in his sandbox.
LOUISE ZEMAITIS is an artist, naturalist and VENT tour leader living in Cape May, New Jersey. She is a popular field trip leader in Cape May where she leads bird and butterfly walks and teaches birding workshops as an Associate Naturalist with Cape May Bird Observatory. Louise is also coordinator of the Monarch Monitoring Project in Cape May, Compiler of the Cape May Christmas Bird Count, and curator of the Cape May Bird Observatory Art Gallery. 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. Louise and her husband, Michael O’Brien, have been mentoring young birders with ABA and Leica for the past ten years.
