Dr. Stanley (Skip) Almoney. Skip was born and raised in York, Pennsylvania and educated at Lowell Technological Institute and Lehigh University.  In 1970 upon receiving his PhD in Nuclear Physics, he came to Houston to work as a geophysicist for Texaco in Bellaire.  During the next 31 years he worked in a variety of petroleum exploration positions for Texaco including over ten years in international exploration.  He took early retirement after the merger between Chevron and Texaco and has spent his retirement time with various volunteer endeavors.  

He began bird watching in the summer of 1993 before being transferred to Indonesia for a year.  When he returned to Houston he joined the Ornithology Group of the Outdoor Nature Club and has served that organization as Vice-Chairman and Chairman.

He is a certified Texas Master Naturalist and as a member of the Houston Audubon Society has served on the Board of Directors and worked as a volunteer on workdays at High Island and Bolivar Flats, as a mentor at the Boy Scout Woods rookery, and as a goods salesman at High Island. He worked on Galveston Island Nature Tourism’s FeatherFest Committee for several years.

He has led birding trips throughout Texas for both Houston Audubon and The Ornithology Group, and of course at FeatherFest.  He has birded on all continents except Antarctica and hopes to get there within the next several years.

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Jeff Bouton. During 20 years as a birder, Jeff has worked as a field researcher, tour leader, festival speaker, and optics specialist. Today he represents the Leica brand. Jeff brings a great range of abilities to a festival not the least of which are ideas for making festivals he attends more relevant and exciting. Jeff is known for his articles that are 

focused on the needs of and opportunities for children who have an interest in the outdoors, nature and birding. His articles in Wildbird Magazine under the title “Adventures with Austin” feature his outdoor experiences with his son Austin. 

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Damien Carey. On returning to Houston in 1991, Damien Carey took up birding and rapidly became an avid birder. He began developing his birder’s ear while chasing nesting Swainson’s warblers in the bottomlands around Lake Houston. Bird vocalizations opened a pleasurable dimension to his understanding and appreciation of avifauna. Mr. Carey further developed his birder's ear out of necessity. Texas has little public land and birding is often from the roadside or a fence line of private land.

Several years ago, he created a "Birding-By-Ear" presentation with the goal of encouraging birders to go beyond optics. Based on input from audience members frustrated in developing their birder’s ear, Mr. Carey revised his presentation around a strategy for acquiring the skill.

Birding-by-ear has influenced Mr. Carey professionally. He established a nature club for at-risk children at a Humble ISD elementary school. Each year he introduces fourth and fifth graders to animal vocalizations and found the students fascinated most by bird song. Mr. Carey applied for an artist’s grant and wrote The Stories of Mimm, an oral story that offers a fanciful answer to the riddle of “why mockingbirds mock,” and a lesson about conservation.

As a member of the Kingwood Kingbirders, Mr. Carey put his birder’s ear to the competitive test in the Greater Texas Birding Classics. After several second and third place finishes, the team won their division in 2002 then promptly retired from competition.

Annually, Mr. Carey leads field trips for Houston area birding and nature groups. He founded the Lake Houston Area Nature Club in 1995. In 1999, he established and has since compiled the Lake Houston CBC. After completing a five year bird census, Mr. Carey rewrote the “Birds of Sheldon Lake SP.” He serves on the advisory board of Legacy Land Trust (LLT) and conducts habitat valuations and baseline bird surveys in support of its conservancy efforts. Sparrows are a passion of Mr. Carey’s and he conducted several survey transacts for Project Prairie Bird. For the past three years, he has served as president and a director of the Friends of Sheldon Lake SP, which he founded. He speaks on behalf of conservation, birds and birding, to civic and service clubs. When not birding he can often be found wade fishing in the waters around Galveston. He is a writer and business consultant.

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Peter Dunne.  Pete is Vice President for Natural History Information for the New Jersey Audubon and Director of the Society’s Cape May Bird Observatory.  A life long resident of New Jersey, he is author of more than a dozen books on bird watching and has been a contributing columnist and writer for every major birding magazine.  He is the founder of and 25 year participant in the World Series of Birding, an event that has raised over $8,000,000 for bird conservation.  An authority on optics and birding, he has served as a consultant to all of the top optical companies.

Called “The Bard of Birding” by the Wall Street Journal he was the recipient of the American Birding Association’s Roger Tory Peterson Award in 2001 and ranked among New Jersey Magazine’s favorite 50 residents.

He and wife Linda live in the village of Mauricetown in Cumberland County, New Jersey where they are currently at work on a four book series treating the seasons. The first book, Prairie Spring, is due to be released in March and will be available for purchase at FeatherFest.

Other books Pete has written include: The Art of Pishing, Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion, Pete Dunne on Birding, The Wind Masters, The Feather Quest and Hawks in Flight.

Pete is the featured speaker at the FeatherFest 2009 Keynote dinner on Friday, April 3…don’t miss it!

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Tony Frank. Tony is a native Texan and has lived most of his life somewhere in Texas. He has lived in the Houston area for the last 27 years and has been active in birding for the last 20 years. Tony started bird watching in 1985 with his wife Phyllis. Tony’s favorite families of birds are woodpeckers, owls, and hummingbirds. In addition to birding, he enjoys camping and hiking. Favorite Texas birding locations are the Upper Texas Coast and West Texas. Recently field birding time has been limited, because he watches his daughter’s soccer games most weekends. However, he takes time whenever possible to get out doors and watch birds including participating in the Great Texas Birding Classic for the past 4 year in the state wide competition.

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Robert Honig. Bob has extensive experience in natural history, with particular interests in field ornithology and the study of dragonflies and damselflies. He earned a B.A. in Biology (ecology emphasis) from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in Zoology in the Aquatic Ecology Program at Virginia Tech. Bob has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Katy Prairie Conservancy, a land trust focusing its efforts just west of Houston, since its founding in 1992.

He has conducted many bird surveys (including several seasons for the Texas Breeding Bird Atlas Project), as well as surveys for dragonflies and damselflies, and butterflies. He has served as Chairman of the Ornithology Group of Houston's Outdoor Nature Club; he has been Compiler of the Buffalo Bayou, Texas, Christmas Bird Count (CBC) since 1984; and he was a founder and Compiler of the Brazos Bend, Texas, CBC. Bob – often with his wife, Maggie – has led numerous natural history field trips and tours domestically as well as to the Neotropics, and has regularly lectured to nature and conservation organizations. Bob's professional environmental experience began with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and continued in the natural gas pipeline industry and then environmental consulting. He has addressed such diverse issues as endangered species, erosion control and revegetation, wetlands, archaeology and historic preservation, water discharges, spill prevention and control, waste minimization and recycling, and sustainable development – and his work has taken him to far-flung locales, including environmental surveys in Bolivia and the Algerian Sahara. He currently is employed in the Environmental Services Group of AMEC Paragon, an energy industries project management and engineering services company in Houston.

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Kevin T. Karlson. Kevin has been a wildlife photographer for 25 years and active as a birder for 27 years. He has traveled from the wilds of the Alaskan Arctic to the rainforests of Central and South America to photograph birds.

As a noted wildlife photographer in North America, his work is widely published in numerous birding magazines and journals, as well as books, field guides, calendars and CD-ROM's. In 1999, Tidemark Press published Kevin's own calendar titled "Birds of the Arctic Tundra", which was endorsed by the American Birding Association. He worked closely with Peter Thayer in a major revision of the CD-Rom "The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Guide to Birds of North America" as head ornithologist, photo researcher and submitter of almost 800 photos used in the project. This comprehensive revision was released in April 2002, with many new photos and the inclusion of plumages not previously shown in older versions. In 1999, Kevin assisted John Robinson of Lanius Software in the submission of 110 photos for the "North American Bird Reference Book" CD-ROM, and recently added another 60 photos to a revision of this product.

Kevin is currently on the advisory board of Wild Bird Magazine as well as a staff contributor of the column Birder's ID. Additional contributions to Wild Bird include writing feature articles. He is a former photo editor of North American Birds, an ornithological journal of ABA. Besides photography, Kevin authors numerous articles on birds, from advice on good locations to see and photograph them to insights on natural history. He recently signed a contract with Houghton Miflin Publishers to produce a book called "The Shorebird Guide", with co-authors Richard Crossley and Michael O'Brien. This comprehensive field guide, due to be released in the spring of 2006, will contain almost 700 photos and outline a simpler method of bird identification for beginners and experts alike.

Mr. Karlson spent the summers of 1992-95 working for Troy Ecological Research Associates as a wildlife biologist in the Alaskan Arctic, participating in research and census studies of the birds that use this fragile habitat. His photo collection from this region is one of the best in the world.

In recent years, Kevin has joined the Birding Symposium and Festival circuit as a keynote speaker and workshop presenter. Year 2002 keynotes include the Bald Eagle Festival in Klamath Falls Oregon and the Central Valley Bird Symposium in Stockton California. 2003 venues included the San Diego Bird Festival, Eastern Shore of Virginia Bird Festival and the Rio Grande Bird Festival in Harlingen Texas. 2004 brought Kevin to Galveston's Featherfest and the Copper River Shorebird Festival in Cordova Alaska.

Currently a resident of Cape May County NJ, Kevin is a 12-year member of the NJ Bird Records Committee and active in the Cape May birding community. He is the founder and president of Jaeger Tours, Inc., a small birding tour company (www.jaegertours.net) with an emphasis on the enjoyment of a total birding/nature experience.

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Dr. Susan Knock. Susan is an outdoor enthusiast who makes a living teaching chemistry and biology courses at Texas A&M University at Galveston. She is on the Board of Directors of Artist Boat. Her TAMUG birding team has competed in the great Texas Birding Classic for six consecutive years winning over $10,000 for conservation projects in the Galveston area. On weekends you can find her kayaking with her husband, Chuck, and their "Kayak Pack", Whiskee Jack and Amber (Finnish Sptiz).

Jim O’Donnell.  Jim developed a passion for birding almost 30 years ago as a student of Ed Kutac. He has traveled the world following his passion from the Aleutian Islands, Australia, Iceland, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and the Galapagos Islands. Jim worked for 7 years studying and banding black-capped vireos under contract for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This led to serving on the Biological Advisory Team for the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan. While serving on the team, he helped draft a plan to recover and protect endangered species in central Texas. As a teacher in Dripping Springs TX, Jim has led many birding trips for adults and children to the upper Texas coast. He loves sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge about birds.

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Dr. Richard Peake. Dick has been an active field ornithologist for over fifty years. He began his birding early in Chesapeake, Virginia. When he was 11 years old, his fifth grade school teacher started a junior Audubon Club in her class. Two years later, Peake persuaded his parents to buy him a pair of WWII army surplus 6x30 binoculars. Imagine his excitement when one of the first birds he found in his neighborhood was a Western Kingbird.

At the University of Virginia, his roommate Renwick Kerr and Dick spent more time birding than studying for classes. The result was a good bird list for that year, and the opportunity for Dick to work his way to the West Coast delivering samples door to door, an excellent way to see birds as well as earn money to replace his lost scholarship money. Back home and attending Old Dominion University for a semester, Dick made his first significant contribution to Virginia ornithology by finding a group of Lincoln's Sparrows wintering in Tidewater Virginia, a find that led to his first article in the Virginia Society of Ornithology's publication The Raven.

Returning to the University of Virginia, Dick took a BA and MA in English. He then taught at Clemson University, the University of Georgia, and Western Carolina University, all the while continuing his birding activities. After taking a Ph.D. in English at the University of Georgia, he became Chair of the Department of English at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, Virginia, a post that he held (with a few years of) for thirty years. During that time he was active in the Virginia Society of Ornithology and served as a member of its governing board, its records committee, and its President.

From 1991-1996 he was compiler of the Wise County, Virginia, Christmas Bird Count. After retirement in 1998, he began spending much of his time in Galveston, Texas. He became co-compiler of the Freeport Christmas Bird Count, a post he has just relinquished, and for the last three years he has been teaching a birding class in UTMB's Lifelong Learning program.

Though not primarily a "lister," he has an ABA list of well over 700 and a world list of 4500 species. He is a life member of the AOU, the Association of Field Ornithologists, the Carolina Bird Club, the Houston Audubon Society, KOS, TOS (both Tennessee and Texas), VSO, and the Wilson Ornithological Society. Now Professor Emeritus of English, Dick gives illustrated bird programs and does occasional volunteer and professional birding tours in Texas and Virginia.

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Cecilia M Riley. Cecilia is the Executive director of the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory. A native Texan, biologist and avid bird watcher, Cecilia has committed her life's work to avian research and natural history in both North America and Latin America. Cecilia's educational background includes a B.S. in Ecology from the University of Texas at Arlington and a M.S. in Zoology from the University of Arkansas.  Prior to her position at the GCBO, she spent 2 years as the state coordinator for Texas Partners in Flight and 8 years as a research associate of marine studies at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas.  

Currently, Cecilia's professional efforts focus on the conservation issues associated with the protection of migratory songbirds and stopover habitat in the ecologically important Gulf of Mexico region.

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Pam Smolen. Pam Smolen was raised an army brat living in Alaska, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and finally settling in Texas. She grew up enjoying the outdoors, hiking, and camping. She graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in Chemical Engineering. She discovered the wonderful world of birds about seven years ago and has been hooked ever since.

Pam is currently Vice-Chair of the Houston Ornithology Group. She is an active volunteer for Houston Audubon. She is a member of the Birdathon committee and participates in many coastal work days. Pam contributes to Houston Audubon’s Citizen Science Program. She is the leader of the Houston Chimney Swift Count.

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Mort Voller. Mort took up birding only after he retired to Galveston Island in 1998. He enjoys showing visitors the natural delights and particularly birds of Galveston Island and the Upper Texas Coast. He and his wife grew up in the countryside in the UK and have always enjoyed the outdoors. The typical Voller family vacation when their children were young, was a long round road trip with a National Park or two thrown in.

Mort is a member and past President of Friends of Galveston Island State Park and also of the Galveston Island Nature Tourism Council, a 501(c) 3 organization he helped create. Mort has been involved in the planning and operation of all seven FeatherFest’s including FeatherFest 2009, and was Chairman of the event from 2005 through 2008. He is looking forward to FF 2009 and being able to simply enjoy leading a trip for those who have chosen to attend.

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Ron Weeks. Ron grew up in Missoula, MT and became interested in birds at age 14 when his high school biology teacher took his class to Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge. He has been interested in birds and bird conservation ever since. He has authored or co-authored three books, including A Birder’s Guide to the Texas Coast and Birdlife of Houston, Galveston and the Upper Texas Coast. Ron is the current President of the Texas Ornithological Society, a sub-regional editor of North American Birds and a compiler for the San Bernard NWR and Freeport Christmas Bird Counts. He also enjoys using his knowledge of birds and bird distribution for “Big Days.” Ron holds Big Day records in four states and in 2001 he led his team to a new US Big Day record of 258 species.

Ron currently lives in Lake Jackson, TX with his wife, Irenna, and their two children, Mathias (17) and Ariana (14). He works in Freeport, TX as a Chemical Engineer for the Dow Chemical Company. He is also active in the Boys Scouts and the Episcopal Church.

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Gay York. Gay will be leading a group to the Attwater Prairie Preserve on Sunday morning. A resident of LaPorte, Texas on Galveston Bay since 1979, Gay grew up in the beautiful Allegheny Mountains of northwestern Pennsylvania. A great love and appreciation of the outdoors has made her a life long bird enthusiast. Gay participates in the HAS Christmas Bird Count each year at Armand Bayou Nature Center. Her favorite birding vacation spot is Belize.

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