Caitlin became a passionate birder while working as a research assistant in the rainforest of Australia. Her passion for shorebirds grew while walking the beaches every day for 6 months in her work monitoring the piping plover population on Long Island, N.Y. Her next job involved hauling around a 6 foot fiberglass Atlantic sturgeon to help educate people along the Hudson River Valley on environmental issues surrounding the estuary.

Caitlin is currently finishing her master’s thesis on western snowy plover use of former commercial salt ponds in the South San Francisco Bay. As a biologist for San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory, she also studies various other bird issues. She hopes to continue working with shorebirds after she earns her Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies this spring from San Jose State University.

Jessie Barry’s passion for birds was sparked at the age of ten in her hometown of Rochester, New York. Jessie is a senior at the University of Washington working toward a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and is involved in research at the Burke Museum. She writes for Birding and WildBird magazines, and is a contributing author for the National Geographic Complete Birds of North America and the newly released, Good Birder’s Don’t Wear White: 50 Tips from North America’s Top Birder’s.

Tyler Hicks began birding at the age of 10 and distinctly remembers the first bird he recorded in his Golden Guide, an Eastern Screech-Owl.

Tyler has come to believe he has been hardwired to be a birder and has as a young man left formal education behind to bird through out North American and later do bird research in Asia.  His experience in Asia led to Tyler becoming very active in the Saemangeum estuary reclamation project in Korea.  His experiences there also made him realize that to maximize the attention he wanted to bring to habitat destruction issues in Asia he needed to sacrifice his freedoms for the short term and complete his college education. 

Tyler has return to pursue his undergraduate degree and has now completed his Junior year in college, but graduation will have to wait a bit as he has become very involved in the effort to document sightings of the new rediscovered Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. 

Samantha only discovered a passion for ornithology at the relatively late age of 21 while working on a project studying reproductive biology of passerines near Churchill, Manitoba.', '

Her first introduction to shorebirds occurred when she was given the opportunity to attend the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival in 2005 thanks to the Schantz Memorial Scholarship, and this trip proved to make a lasting impression.

She earned an Honours B.Sc. in zoology from the University of Toronto in 2005, and has worked as a field technician on various ornithological projects, including seabird research on Triangle Island, B.C. and songbird migration research at Long Point Bird Observatory, Ontario and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, Ohio.

She is currently a M.Sc. candidate at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. where she is focussing on evolutionary and behavioural ecology questions to do with southbound migration in shorebirds, specifically migration and moult strategies of least, semipalmated, and western sandpipers.

Samantha would like to continue as an avian field biologist, and hopes to one day return to Alaska and put her new expertise at distinguishing peep species at a distance to good use!

Ed Conrad grew up discovering his home state of Utah with this father – generally using birding as an excuse for the travel and time together.  He went on to graduate from Westminster College in the spring of 2006 with a B.S. in Biology, where upon the role birds play in his life expanded.  Ed spent the summer after college graduation hiking the Appalachian Trail and encountered 144 species and 27 life birds along the trail to Maine.  Since September, he has worked as a research assistant in Tennessee working on two projects, a shorebird impact study and a bottomland hardwood restoration study.

The shorebird study focused on looking at food availability in response to the drawdown of Kentucky Reservoir by quantifying the macroinvertebrates and moist soil seeds in the exposed mudflats.  To aid in the study, a diet analysis completed on the shorebirds to determine exactly what the sandpipers are eating.  The data will be utilized by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a project sponsor, to aid in making reservoir drawdown management decisions that balance the requirements of migrating shorebirds and the interests of other lake property stake holders.

The bottomland hardwood restoration focus is western Tennessee Wetland Reserve Program sites (WRP's).  The WRP's are easements that return unproductive farmland back to bottomland hardwood forests.  The goal of the on going project is to determine the effectiveness of the program in achieving the restoration of diminishing bottomland hardwood forests.

Ben has been a birder since the age of 12 when he discovered birding while on a family vacation in the Teton Mountains.  He still recalls the thrill of identifying his first bird, a Clark’s Nutcracker that had flown across the trail, with the aid of a family friend and his field guide.  He will earn a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University in May 2007, where he designed his own major combining classes in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natural Resources, and Plant Science.  While at Cornell, in addition to birding the Cayuga Lake basin, Ben became heavily involved in ornithological research, investigating the evolution of migration in wood-warblers, life history traits of swallows, and the migration of Wilson's Phalaropes.

He hopes to continue his research on the evolution of migration by attending graduate school in Evolutionary Biology.  First, however, he will spend a year or two exploring the tropics, trying to come to grips with South America's staggering avian diversity and becoming involved with conservation projects.  The Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival was Ben's first experience birding outside of the lower 48, an experience that was certainly formative in his desire to travel far and wide for birds.

Josh grew up near Chicago, where he discovered the joys of birding along the Lake Michigan shoreline at a young age.  He was soon crisscrossing the US with other young birders before attending college in southern California.

After graduating in 2004 he participated in various bird-related research projects around the world, eventually landing a job as a birding guide for the international tour operator Tropical Birding.  

He was originally based in Quito, Ecuador, where he had spent four months studying during college, leading tours to all parts of the country.  He continues to work as a full-time guide for Tropical Birding, now based out of their Cape Town, South Africa office, leading tours throughout southern Africa, Madagascar, and Ecuador.