FEATURED GUESTS
In alphabetical order:
John Banks is the Director of the Department of Natural Resources for the Penobscot Indian Nation, a federally recognized Indian Tribe in Maine. Mr. Banks has served the Penobscot Nation in this capacity since 1980, following the enactment of the Maine Indian Land Claims settlement Act of 1980. As Natural Resources Director, Mr. Banks has developed and administers a comprehensive Natural Resources management program for his tribe, which advances an integrated management approach, in recognition of the inter- connectedness of all things in the natural world. Mr. Banks has served on many local, regional, and national organization boards including the National Tribal Environmental Council, Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, National Indian Policy Center, and the Tribal Operations Committee with USEPA. Mr. Banks has a BS degree in Forest Protection from the University of Maine, where he was awarded an Indian Fellowship from the office of Indian Education in Washington DC.Leslie Clapp graduated from Ithaca College with a BS in Photography. She traveled extensively and got seriously interested in birds after a trip to East Africa in '99. In 2004, she became the president of Downeast Audubon, a chapter of Maine Audubon, and continues in that role today. She is passionate about creating backyard habitats for birds and teaching others how to improve their yards as well.
Cheryl Daigle is the community liaison and outreach coordinator for the Penobscot River Restoration Trust. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with various conservation groups in Maine and Massachusetts, including The Nature Conservancy, Forest Society of Maine, Cobscook Bay Resource Center, and Maine Sea Grant. The focus of her work has primarily been to raise awareness about the natural environment and to engage people in stewardship of their local environment and/or habitat restoration projects. She is also a writer and poet, and serves as a correspondent to Orion magazine. She lives by the Penobscot River with her family in Old Town.
Alison C. Dibble, Ph.D., of Brooklin, Maine, is a plant conservation biologist who serves on the adjunct faculty at the University of Maine School of Biology and Ecology, in Orono, and is a cooperating research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service. She was a board member of the Blue Hill Heritage Trust for 15 years, and President from 2001-2003. She taught plant taxonomy at U Maine and at College of the Atlantic. Today she runs a consulting firm, Stewards LLC, which provides research and consultation on plant conservation to agencies such as the Maine Forest Service, land trusts, and individuals
Michael J. Good, MS. Biologist/naturalist, President of Down East Nature Tours in Bar Harbor, Maine and Founder of Warblers and Wildflowers Festival (1998-2007) and events coordinator for Acadia Birding Festival. He has over 25 years experience studying the birds of North America and brings a wealth of knowledge about Neotropical migrants and the avifauna of the Eastern United States. Michael has traveled extensively in the US, Alaska, Europe, Australia, South America and Cuba. Michael is a regional business leader promoting sound ecologically practices in business, government and land development. As a Registered Maine Guide, Michael has been guiding professionally for many years through his company Down East Nature Tours focusing on avian ecology in the Gulf of Maine bioregion. Fields of expertise include wetland ecology, ornithology, environmental education and Developmental Biology. Michael spent many years studying numerous aspects of the Gulf of Maine while employed at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In his spare time he maintains Three Pines Bird Sanctuary in Town Hill, Maine, studying micro-habitat of Neotropical migratory birds on Mount Desert Island, Maine and winter ecology in various Neotropical countries when given the opportunity. He currently holds a BA (Biology) from Earlham College and a MS (Developmental Biology) from the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Just recently, Michael was selected as the Best Birdwatching Guide by Yankee Magazine:
"Biologist and Maine Guide Michael Good is simply
batty about birds, and he shares his knowledge
with avian addicts and neophytes alike. Whether
you’re pining to see warblers, falcons, eagles,
and hawks or seeking to add a Nelson’s sharptailed
sparrow to your life list, Good’s your man.
He supplies local transportation and a spotting
scope."
Ed Hawkes, a Bar Harbor bird carver, carving instructor, and avid birdwatcher, will demonstrate his carving process at Alone Moose gallery. Also on display will be a number of his finished carved birds. He has won numerous national and international competitions including a Best of Show for a life size loon. Ed was one of the artists selected to work on an endangered species project for the Visitors Center at the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Naples, Florida. He carved and painted two nesting and six flying Least Terns and a Red-cockaded Woodpecker for this display. His two nesting Least Terns are displayed in a seashore diorama demonstrating loss of their critical habitat due to overuse of beaches by humans. Ed’s six flying Least Terns are mounted swirling up the wall above the diorama. And his Red-cockaded Woodpecker is part of the upland habitat display demonstrating the need for periodic burning. These endangered woodpeckers, as well as many other species, rely on the periodic burning of the undergrowth to maintain their habitat.
Billy Helprin lives in Bass Harbor and has been interested in birds and other wildlife as long as he can remember. He has a Master of Science degree from Utah State University and a Master of Arts in Teaching. Billy has enjoyed leading wildlife explorations and studies in the Rocky Mountain region for Great Plains Wildlife Institute, the Teton Science School, and Abercrombie and Kent; and in Kenya for the School for Field Studies. He has been involved with avian research and inventory projects in Ohio, Maine, Wyoming and Guatemala. Whenever possible, Billy enjoys getting out with friends or on his own to see and hear which bird species are nearby and what they are up to.
Rebecca Holberton is Associate Professor of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine in Orono. She received her Ph.D. in Biology at the State University of New York at Albany in 1991. Her doctoral work focused on how environmental factors, such as food availability and social conditions, interact with internal control mechanisms (biological clocks) to shape migration patterns in songbirds. Rebecca went on to do post-doctoral work at the University of Washington, spending two summers of field research on Alaska’s North Slope studying the breeding biology of various bird species. She also spent an austral winter at sea around the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic, studying how various seabird species, such as diving petrels, prions, and penguins, cope with extreme weather conditions throughout the long Antarctic winter. Her team was the first to collect hormone samples from wintering King and Gentoo penguins, as well as over a dozen other seabirds, at South Georgia. Rebecca’s first academic position was at the University of Mississippi (1993-2000), during which she studied the ecology, behavior, and physiology of migratory songbirds crossing the Gulf of Mexico. She also developed a research program at sites in Churchill, Manitoba, and throughout New England, focusing on how Blackpoll warblers prepare for the extraordinary migrations they make out over the North Atlantic to reach their wintering grounds in Amazonia. As a physiologist, she spent a winter in New Zealand working with colleagues to explore ways of bringing the Kakapo and other endangered species into breeding condition. Since joining the faculty at the University of Maine in 2000, Rebecca has been collaborating with colleagues at the Smithsonian Institute, USF&W Maine Coastal Island National Wildlife Refuge, University of New Brunswick, and Environment Canada on several projects that investigate how events birds experience away from the breeding grounds can be important determinants on subsequent breeding success. These studies often combine physiology with environmental markers incorporated into blood, feathers, and claws during the migratory and non-migratory stages to determine where birds either bred or overwintered, and what migratory pathways they may use to reach their destinations. These studies include alcids (Razorbills and Atlantic puffins), terns, several species of shorebirds, and many species of songbirds. A recent collaborative effort with USF&W revealed a previously undocumented flyway across the Gulf of Maine, with an estimated one-quarter to one-half million songbirds arriving in a localized region along the mid-coast area during fall migration, and work is underway to investigate this flyway further.
At UMaine, Rebecca teaches courses in animal behavior, ecology, and physiology and mentors undergraduate and graduate students. She has served on the board of several national ornithological societies and is currently on the national Council for the American Ornithologists’ Union as well as a board member for the Penobscot Valley Chapter of Maine Audubon. Rebecca publishes in a wide array of research journals, presents her group’s work to the professional and general public, and promotes public interest and citizen science involvement in the region. Rebecca lives in Hampden, where she studies British-U.S. Colonial history and archaeology, gardens, and collects antiques when she is not out at various field sites studying birds.
Eric Hynes is Maine Audubon's Gilsland Farm naturalist and adult education program coordinator. He teaches bird identification workshops and leads field trips locally and abroad. Eric's life-long passion for wildlife, and in particular birds, has led to extensive field work on raptors, migration, and neotropical migrant songbirds from Panama to the Pribilofs. Eric sits on the Maine Bird Records Committee, is the state's Breeding Bird Survey Coordinator, and compiles the Rare Bird Alert for the state of Maine. Some of his previous positions include: tour guide, environmental educator, owl bander, and ground squirrel rustler. He is a certified Wilderness First Responder.
Steve Ingraham is the Birding and Naturalist 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 BetterViewDesired and BetterViewDesired.com on the World Wide Web.
Craig Kesselheim lives with his family in Southwest Harbor, and has been birding ever since he was hooked by a college ornithology course in 1973. He has birded North America from the Canadian and Alaskan tundra to the Florida Everglades, to the mountain west and desert southwest. Craig appreciates being humbled several times a year by confusing plumages, songs or silhouettes – it is what makes birding a lifelong learning project. Although not a competitive lister, Craig is avid about citizen science, submitting most of his daily sightings to www.eBird.org . Craig has birded Maine locales, on and offshore, for about 25 years. Professionally, Craig is a career educator employed by the Great Schools Partnership in Portland, Maine.
Paul Kerlinger received a M.S. and Ph.D from the State University of New York at Albany in 1982, where his doctoral research involved using tracking radar to study the aerodynamics and flight behavior of migrating hawks. He went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship at Clemson University using mobile radars to study night migrating songbirds. From there, Kerlinger was awarded a National Science and Engineering Research Counsel of Canada research fellowship at the University of Calgary. During three years in Canada, he conducted field studies of wintering Snowy Owls on the prairies of Alberta. After teaching and conducting research at the University of Southern Mississippi, he was named as Director of the Cape May Bird Observatory for New Jersey Audubon Society. He served in that position from 1987 through 1994, during which time he also established the research program for NJ Audubon and developed the center for Research and Education for Audubon.
Kerlinger left the non-profit world in 1994 and established his consulting firm, Curry & Kerlinger, LLC, which focuses on issues related to birds, wind turbines, and, to a lesser degree communication towers. Curry & Kerlinger has assisted in the permitting of wind turbines in more than 15 states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, and Spain. Kerlinger’s research has focused on the flight behavior of migrating birds, habitat use by migrants, birding economics and ecotourism, and, more recently, the impact of tall structures on birds. He has published extensively in the scientific peer-reviewed literature and writes a column, Birds on the Move, for Birder’s World magazine. He also has published five books including How Birds Migrate published by Stackpole Books, Flight Strategies of Migrating Hawks published by the University of Chicago Press, and The New York City Audubon Society Guide to Finding Birds in the Metropolitan Area (coauthored with Marcia Fowle) published by Cornell University Press. Kerlinger lives in Cape May, NJ and in his spare time tends an organic garden, fly fishes, and co-owns a website, CapeMayTimes.com, with his wife Jane.
Zack Klyver is head naturalist of Bar Harbor Whale Watch and has been guiding whale and seabird trips on the Gulf of Maine for twenty years. He has worked with the Center for Marine Conservation and the research organizations Cape May Bird Observatory and Allied Whale. Zack has also spent a season as a marine mammal lecturer for Abercrombie and Kent guiding trips to Antarctica and during the austral summer saw seven species of Penguin and five species of Albatross. He has been an avid birder since he began feeding birds at the age of twelve.
David Lamon, M.S., is the Executive Director of the Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary and serves as President of the Mount Desert Island Water Quality Coalition. His work focuses on environmental conservation, restoration, monitoring, and education. As a naturalist he enjoys spending time in aquatic environments
Kristen Lindquist is Development Director for Coastal Mountains Land Trust, based in her hometown of Camden, and also a freelance writer and poet with two published chapbooks. In addition to a monthly nature column for the Herald-Gazette, her work has been published most recently in A Coastal Companion, the Bangor Daily News, and Down East magazine. An avid birder, she often leads bird walks in the midcoast area. She also serves on the board of Friends of Maine Seabird Islands.
Rich MacDonald has worked in the field of ecology, for nearly 25 years, with an emphasis on birds. His ornithological interests have taken him from New York's Adirondack Mountains to the Dominican Republic and Mexico and, since 2002, to the coast of Maine. He has worked on the science staff of The Nature Conservancy and has taught ornithology at College of the Atlantic. Among his diverse experiences, Rich has also served as naturalist for radio persona Garrison Keillor on all three cruises of A Prairie Home Companion...and will be again working with GK on the March 2010 cruise of the western Caribbean. Among his credentials, he is also a licensed guide in Maine and New York, teaching sea kayaking, white-water kayaking, canoeing, and telemark skiing. Currently, Rich is vice president of the Downeast Chapter of Maine Audubon. In May, Rich will be opening a new business in Bar Harbor: The Natural History Center.
Abby McBride - Abby McBride has provided illustrations for Acadia Birding Festival since 2008. A birder, field researcher, and self-taught artist, she studied biology at Williams College. Her work appears regularly in New York City Audubon's newsletter.
Becky Marvil lives with her family in Yarmouth, Maine. She has a background from Biology (Earlham College) and in Ornithology and Computer Science (University of Colorado), and runs her own computer programming/webpage design business. She is pleased to be a part of the Acadia Birding Festival, combining her skills in webpage design and birding. During her free time, she can be found birding with friends in the Portland area, helping with numerous bird surveys, and chasing after rarities. Her summers are spent programming, birding, sailing, hiking, and biking on Mount Desert Island.
Robert L. Shaw - Born and raised in Bar Harbor, Robert is proud to be an "island native". Ask him anything about Mount Desert Island, the local environment, or his favorite subject, fishing. He is sure to provide lots of interesting tales. Robert received a BS in Recreation Management and Business Administration in 1984 from the University of Maine. When he is not kayaking or fishing, he enjoys camping, swimming, scuba diving, boating and paddling the Florida Everglades. Robert sits on the Board of Directors of the Bar Harbor Savings & Loan Association.
Scott Swann B.A and M.Ph, College of the Atlantic: For the last 12 years Scott has taught Ornithology, field ecology and marine botany at College of the Atlantic where he is also curator of the collection at the Dorr Museum of Natural History. Scott and his wife drove from Bar Harbor Maine through central and south America to Terra del Fuego on an epic bird watching voyage.
Steven Valleau has been Carver-in-Residence at the Wendell Gilley Museum since 1985. A keen birder since boyhood, Valleau earned a biology degree from the University of Maine at Orono and Indiana University. As a senior however, his true vocation was revealed by several art courses. Encouraged by art and ornithology professors, he decided to become a professional bird carver. Sought after as both an artist and a teacher, Valleau has taught students of all ages and created carvings that range from miniature shorebirds to life-size great blue herons. His works are in many private and public collections. The façade of the Gilley Museum features a series of bas-reliefs depicting seven native bird species, which Valleau created for the 15th anniversary of the Museum. Inside the Museum, visitors can see his latest works and works-in-progress and see how wood can become a warbler.
Steve Walker is a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Steve is currently the coordinator of Maine's Beginning with Habitat Program. Beginning with Habitat is the primary public outreach and local implementation arm of Maine's State Wildlife Action Plan. In this role, Steve works with municipalities and land trusts throughout the state to advance strategic approaches to conservation that effectively address Maine's 213 Species of Greatest Conservation Need and Focus Areas of Statewide Ecological Significance. Prior to his work for the State of Maine, Steve was the Natural Resources Planner for the Town of Brunswick which continues to be a leader in local conservation efforts in southern Maine. Steve also has many years of experience working as a consulting wildlife biologist with Woodlot Alternatives (now Stantec) assisting clients with a full range of field investigations as well as local, state, and federal permit coordination. Steve serves on his local planning board and serves on the board of the Brunswick-Topsham Land trust. Steve received a degree in Environmental Studies from Brown University and a degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Maine, Orono.
Jeffrey V. Wells , Ph.D. is the Senior Scientist for the International Boreal Conservation Campaign and Boreal Songbird Initiative, Seattle-based non-profit organizations working internationally for the conservation of North America's Boreal forest. Dr. Wells works from a satellite office in Gardiner, Maine. He has had a wide-ranging career in bird conservation and birding. After receiving his undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Maine at Farmington in 1988 he went on to earn Ph.D. and Master's degrees in avian ecology from Cornell University. He went on to work for the National Audubon Society, first as Bird Conservation Director for the New York State office, then as the National Director of Bird Conservation. Dr. Wells completed the first book on Important Bird Areas in North America in 1998 when he published Important Bird Areas in New York State, a highly acclaimed handbook to help determine highest priority bird conservation areas for use by state and federal agencies, land trusts, and others. This book, along with his other work, helped firmly establish Audubon’s U.S. Important Bird Areas program, now the largest of its kind in the world. During his tenure with Audubon, Dr. Wells was located at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where he continues as a Visiting Fellow of the Lab. Dr. Wells was the leader of Cornell's first Ivory-billed Woodpecker search team to investigate reports of the species in Arkansas in spring 2004.
Dr. Wells is an active birder and for 12 years was a member of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Sapsucker's birding team, which won the prestigious World Series of Birding in 2001 and 2002. His contributions as a member of the World Series team were instrumental in helping the Lab raise more than $150,000 each year for the Lab's conservation work. Dr. Wells has birded throughout much of the North American continent from the Northwest Territories of Canada to Veracruz, Mexico, and in the Caribbean, where he has led birding trips in the Lesser Antilles and is an expert on the birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. To promote conservation on the islands, he and his wife Allison Childs Wells have created the websites www.arubabirds.com and www.bonairebirds.com. Dr. Wells has been active in bird conservation at every level from working with local land trusts to purchase land for Cerulean Warblers to developing bird conservation plans for IBAs and ecoregions. He spent much of the 1980s researching and working to protect grassland birds in a rare remnant native grassland in southern Maine—work that led to the purchase of the site for conservation. His work now focuses on conservation of the largest remaining wilderness area in North America—Canada’s Boreal Forest—especially through advocating for establishment of large, multi-million acre protected areas. He also serves on the board of the Boothbay Region Land Trust and on the Penobscot River Restoration Trust’s Science Steering Committee.
Dr. Wells is an active speaker and writer. He maintains a blog for the Boreal Songbird Initiative at www.borealbirds.org/blog and has authored or co-authored hundreds of scientific papers, reports, and popular articles on birds and bird conservation . These include several family accounts co-authored with his wife Allison, in the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior. His book, Birder's Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk, published in Fall 2007 by Princeton University Press, is the first of its kind—a bird book for bird conservation. Wells lives in Gardiner, Maine, with his wife, young son, and two indoor cats.