MS & BS Wildlife Ecology, U of Florida. "Almost" AAS in Biotechnology/Molecular Biology.

I welcome suggestions/corrections with helpful, informative comments! I'm here to (re-)learn.

I iNat what I see and eBird what I hear.

Born in Florida, grew up and became a childhood naturalist/birder in western North Carolina thanks to a supportive family and the Highlands Biological Station/ Nature Center.

After spending 15 years in Arizona, I again reside in Florida and am enjoying getting back to my swampy, flatwoods, coastal, Appalachian and Piedmont roots.....except for the cottonmouths, I really don't like cottonmouths... too many close calls.

Worked/lived in 4 countries (USA, Brasil, Chile, Mexico), birded the hell out of 7 others.

While working for Ken Meyer in 2006, I was possibly the first person ever to put a VHF transmitter on a bird (swallow-tailed kite) in North America (Florida) and subsequently (about 5,000 miles away and 5 months later) find and photograph the same bird in South America (Brasil).

Initiated several LeConte's Thrasher survey projects and co-founded the Desert Thrasher Working Group (Jan 2010). Led collaborative surveys that identified previously-unknown overwintering areas of Gray Vireo (co-located with Bursera microphylla) in Arizona, including 3 mountain ranges visible from Phoenix. "Discovered" the Bendire's Thrasher population that led to designating the Joshua Tree Important Bird Area in Arizona. Helped design the Coordinated Breeding Bird Monitoring Plan for Sonoran/Mojave Desert.

With/For others or independently, I have studied the following taxa: Masoncus pogonophyllus (a subterranean spider symbiotic w/ Florida harvester ant), Centruroides hentzi (Hentz's striped scorpion), Sceloporus woodi (Florida scrub lizard), Neoseps (Plestiodon) reynoldsi (Florida sand skink), brown-headed nuthatch, swallow-tailed kite, crested and chimango caracaras, chucao tapaculo, Oncifelis guigna (the smallest cat native to the western hemisphere), reddish egret, white-crowned pigeon, southeastern US pineland bird and vegetation community structure (MS thesis), Sonoran pronghorn, kit fox, gray vireo, LeConte's and Bendire's thrashers, southwestern willow flycatcher, yellow-billed cuckoo.

I may be the only person (or just the first?) to have seen 2 Booby spp. in Arizona on the same day - Brown at Lk Havasu and Blue-footed at Patagonia Lk.

Skills: unsurpassed at finding nests or radio-tagged animals that elude everyone else, off-road driving, bird taxidermy (I made Bernie the BETH lure), SCUBA, gardening and small-scale agriculture, landscaping with native plants, motorboat captain extraordinaire.

For a while I was nearly fluent in Portuguese and spoke without a gringo accent.

Fears (in Nature): bitey sharks, flying cockroaches, large grasshoppers, the afore-mentioned cottonmouths, crazy folks who are still complaining about "the war of northern aggression."

Taxones favoritos

Ver todas