ABA Young Birder of the Year Contest Judges

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.

Kim Kaufman is the Executive Director of the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) and an Ohio native with a lifelong love of the outdoors. Kim's focus on programs for youth at BSBO led to the formation of the Ohio Young Birders Club. In addition to her work in administration and education, Kim has taken part in many research projects, including monitoring Bald Eagle nesting success, banding colonial wading birds, conducting butterfly and breeding bird surveys, and banding songbirds at a BSBO banding station on the Lake Erie shore. In addition to her passion for birds and bird conservation, Kim also loves music, and is the lead vocalist for the classic rock band, 6-7-8-OH. Kim and her husband Kenn live in Oak Harbor, Ohio. Kim was assisted by John Sawvel. A well-rounded naturalist, John, whose favorite “gadget” is a pocket Moleskin notebook partnered with a Fisher Space Pen, assists with all aspects of the Ohio Young Birders Club.

Writing Module

Marci Madsen Fuller likes to swap hats, sometimes wearing several at one time. She holds degrees in History and Art, with an emphasis in architectural history. She was a travel agent, specializing in around-the-world trips and independent international adventures. She maintains a birding travel website, BirdBound.com. She’s authored Crosscurrents, an award-winning historical novel available in the Kindle store. She writes for various publications, including Bird Watcher’s Digest. And she is Chair of the well-known Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. She lives near Harlingen in deep south Texas, with her husband Terry, two indoor cats, and a reclaimed, naturalized yard brimming with life.
 

As director of guidebooks for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, Lisa A. White oversees the Peterson and Kaufman Field Guide series. She has edited birding books by Pete Dunne, Lang Elliott, Don Kroodsma, Bill Thompson III, and Julie Zickefoose, among many others. She lives in Boston with her husband and two sons.
 
 

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

Dudley Edmondson has spent the last 17 years as a freelance nature and wildlife photographer. Many of his images have graced the pages of Natural History publications in the U.S. and Europe. Dudley proudly carries on a family tradition started by his great grandfather Monteith Vance who was a portrait photographer and issued a license by the state of North Carolina in 1919. He plans to continue trying to encourage other African Americans and people of color to discover the beauty and solitude of the natural world through his photographic and writing work. "Nature without question is for everyone. It knows no race, creed or gender and is cheaper than any Therapist you could ever hire."

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.

After a childhood family vacation to a dude ranch in Colorado, native Buckeye, Bill Maynard, knew that one day he would return to his favorite state. After college, Bill combined teaching biology with working summers as a seasonal naturalist and research technician for the National Park Service. He found full-time bird work in CA and NM before returning to Colorado where he eventually came to the ABA as Field Programs' Manager. He is now the editor of Winging It, the ABA newsletter. Bill's main interests involve bird taxonomy and vocalizations, the finer points of bird identification, photography and digiscoping, and travel anywhere; but especially to The Bird Continent.