Holly Merker grew up as an avid naturalist and bird lover, but it wasn’t until her early twenties that she discovered a wider community of people who shared her passion for birding. That experience inspired her lifelong commitment to helping young people find connection, friendship, and joy through birds and nature. She has been part of Camp Delaware Bay since its beginning in 2013 and has served as its Camp Director since 2019. Holly is a co-founder of the Frontiers in Ornithology Student Symposium, created to inspire students exploring paths in conservation and related fields.  A dedicated conservation advocate, Holly has served as Pennsylvania State Coordinator and lead data reviewer for eBird since 2005 and serves on the Board of Directors for several nonprofit organizations focused on bird conservation. With a professional background in Art Therapy, Holly is an advocate for nature-based wellness and Mindful Birding, offering specialized programs for people of all ages and backgrounds to help them access the many therapeutic benefits wild birds can bring to wellbeing, connection, and the health of mind, body, and planet.

Glen Davis hails from Brooklyn, NY, but has called Cape May, NJ home for more than 25 years. Simply put, he loves living, working, and birding in a migration mecca, and also loves being a traveling naturalist. Glen has worked in a large variety of roles: tour leader, biological consultant, grad student, all around restaurants, musician, school teacher, veterinary technician, researcher, interpretive naturalist, and birding salesperson. And most recently he finished over 9 years as a technical manufacturer and lead for radio products with wildlife telemetry company Cellular Tracking Technologies. Some of Glen’s most treasured tenured experiences are from instructing in birding camps and youth birding programs like Camp Chiricahua, Camp Cascades, and ABA’s Camp Delaware Bay. He first met young birders as one himself, at Camp Chiricahua in 1993. He still resides in Cape May with his wife Kashi, a NJ State principal zoologist for beach- and marsh-nesting birds. Glen feels lucky to get to work on some of Kashi’s state bird projects, and loves to be out at night, listening and looking for migrants and moths, especially.

Hello! I am excited to be the intern for Camp Delaware Bay! I was previously an intern for Camp Colorado 2024, this will be my first time birding on the east coast! I am currently living in Flagstaff, Arizona and attending Northern Arizona University in order to complete my BA in Philosophy and BS in Environmental Science. I have lived for most of my life in southern California and the California Central Valley. My interest in the natural world started early, as I spent most of my childhood living in the rural San Diego country surrounded by California sage scrub. During my time in high school, I was able to be a camper at ABA’s Camp Colorado in 2019 through a scholarship provided by Tulare-Kings Audubon Society Chapter. Birding in the California Central Valley, I have ever since been interested in the relationship between our changing landscape and conservation.

Willy Hutcheson is a lifelong birder who grew up immersed in the coastal habitats near his home in Charleston, SC. As a teenager in the late 1980s, he attended several of the first youth birding camps offered by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. His experiences there, especially meeting other like-minded young bird nerds, were life changing, and he later went on to be both a counselor and a leader for VENT’s Camp Chiricahua. A veteran science teacher living in Concord, MA, Willy also spent several years as a full-time tour leader for VENT, travelling to destinations across the U.S. and Panama. In the summers, Willy can be found conducting point count surveys in South Texas, travelling with his family, or exploring the marshes, mudflats, boreal forests, and rocky shoreline near his house on the remote coast of Downeast Maine.