 
Free Raptor Show Times
Friday, April 8 - Noon, 3 p.m.
Sat., April 9 – 10 a.m., Noon, 3:30 p.m.
Sun., April 10 – 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m.
Special Thanks to
Tri-colored Heron Sponsors |
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FeatherFest 2010 Featured Experts
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Keena Acock. Keena has been a bird guide on the upper Texas coast since 2007, and has been bird watching for over 16 years. She has been a scientist for a NASA contractor for over 13 years, but went part-time with NASA in order to follow her passion for birds.
She enjoys teaching clients something new about birds, and sharing her appreciation for our planet and the life on it.
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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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Dr. Mike Austin. Mike grew up in southwestern Ontario, Canada and has been birding since the age of seven. He lived in British Columbia for a short time while completing his medical internship, then practiced in Ontario for a short time. He moved to the Upper Texas Coast in 1978 & has lived here since.
Mike has traveled extensively in North America, building a life list over eight hundred species and around the state of Texas, with a state list over 570. More recently, he has become interested in tropical birds and has traveled to several countries in the American and southeast Asian tropics.
He has regularly participated in Breeding Bird Surveys and Christmas Bird Counts (he is compiler of the Freeport count) since moving to Texas. He has lectured and led field trips for Houston Audubon, the Houston Outdoor Nature Club, the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, Galveston’s Featherfest, the Texas Ornithological Society, and the American Birding Association. He ran the North American Rare Bird Alert for the Houston Audubon Society for fourteen years and wrote a column for A.B.A.’s “Winging It” magazine during that time.
Mike has musical training in church choir as a youth & as a lead in the musical “Camelot” in college. This led naturally to an interest in bird vocalization. Currently, he is familiar with most of the songs & calls of the 700 or so regularly occurring North American birds. He also enjoys recording bird sounds.
Mike lives on two wooded acres in Friendswood in extreme northwestern Galveston County and enjoys trips to his cottage on Lake Erie near the gates of Point Pelee National Park, Ontario.
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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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Winnie Burkett. Winnie Burkett, sanctuary manager for the Houston Audubon Society and Upper Texas Colonial Waterbird Steward for Audubon Texas, was introduced to birding at age four by her grandmother. She grew up looking for birds in the wetlands of South Florida and attended Florida State University. Moving around the country with her petroleum geologist husband gave her the opportunity to work on her life list while raising three sons. Before moving back to the Houston area in 1991, Winnie lived in Storrs, Connecticut where she was on the board of the Connecticut Ornithological Association, worked as the naturalist for the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, and ran a bird banding station in conjunction with the University of Connecticut. Winnie’s main interests and concerns are waterbirds and waterbird habitat protection.
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Damien Carey. Annually, Damien Carey leads field trips for Houston area birding and nature groups. He’s lead field trips throughout Texas. He founded the Lake Houston Area Nature Club in 1995. In 1999, he established and compiled the Lake Houston CBC and Sheldon Lake SP (SLSP) WBC. He also compiles the Texas Colonial Waterbird Census of SLSP’s rookery islands. Carey rewrote the “Birds of Sheldon Lake SP” in 2006. 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 Carey’s and he conducted several surveys for Project Prairie Bird. He has served as president and a director of the Friends of Sheldon Lake SP since he founded it in 2004. He speaks on behalf of conservation, birds and birding, to civic and service clubs. He is active in advocating for more access to the outdoors for families. With his wife Caroline, he established a nature club for at-risk children at a Humble ISD elementary school. Inspired by the students’ fascination of bird song, he 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. When not birding he can often be found wade fishing in the waters around Galveston. He is a business consultant and writer.
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Ted Eubanks. Ted grew up in the Galveston-Houston area and an early deep attachment to nature set him on a path to prominence and respect in the environmental community. He received a BA in Journalism from the University of Houston in 1978 and since 1984 has been involved in the founding and development of a series of businesses. Ted founded Fermata Inc. in 1992 and since that time has been engaged in studying and promoting experiential tourism and outdoor recreation as a sustainable approach to community revitalization and conservation.
Ted is on the Board of Directors of Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. He is a past President of Houston Audubon and the Texas Ornithological Societies, Chairman of the Ornithology Group of the Outdoor Nature Club and a member of the Governor's Texas nature Tourism Task Force.
For over thirty years Ted has been committed to the conservation of critical bird habitats along the upper Texas coast. He played a critical role in establishing High Island Boy Scout Woods and Smith Oaks Sanctuary (and there is Eubanks Woods there also), Sabine Woods, Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary, Corp Woods (East Galveston), and Kleb Woods in Harris County.
Ted is the author of “Birdlife of Houston, Galveston, and the Upper Texas Coast” and “Finding Birds on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail.” He and his wife live in both Austin and Galveston.
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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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 Donald P. Freiday. Don is Director of Birding Programs for the Cape May Bird Observatory. He has worked in the field of nature interpretation and wildlife biology for over 20 years, taught wildlife ecology at Rutgers University, and led birding tours throughout the United States. Don was regional coordinator for the New Jersey Breeding Bird Atlas, past Director of NJAS’s Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuaries, and is a former member of the New Jersey Bird Records Committee. Author of A Precious Place: a Naturalist Explores New Jersey and coauthor of Wild Journeys: Migration in New Jersey, his skills as a communicator are exceeded only by his knowledge and field expertise.
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Dr. Nancy Greig. Nancy is a naturalist and field biologist with special interests in plants and insects. She currently works at the Houston Museum of Natural Science as their curator of entomology, after serving for 11 years as director of the Cockrell Butterfly Center. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice University.
Her background is in tropical plant ecology, and she has spent several years in Costa Rica and other neotropical countries doing research and leading field courses and natural history tours. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1991.
Because of her years at the Cockrell Butterfly Center, butterflies have become a special interest. Nancy was a founding member and served on the board of the Houston chapter of the North American Butterfly Association, the "Butterfly Enthusiasts of Southeast Texas", or BEST-NABA. She frequently gives presentations on butterflies and/or butterfly gardening in and around Houston.
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Steve Gross leads birding trips and tours to the Upper Texas Coast, the Texas Hill Country, the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and Arizona.
In addition to work with endangered Golden-cheeked Warblers and Black-capped Vireos in the Texas Hill Country, Steve has conducted surveys in several regions of Texas. When leading field trips and tours, Steve enjoys the opportunity to work with less experienced birders, a trait well in line with his “day job” as a special education teacher. Steve is a published bird photographer and the author of the yet-to-be published “A Young Birder’s Guide to Texas.” Steve lives in Houston.
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 Maggie and Robert (Bob) Honig. Maggie’s lifetime natural history interests and experience have focused on insect-plant relationships, and also on spiders. She has a B.S. in Biology/Environmental Science, an M.S.Ed. specializing in environmental education, and a B.S. in Cytotechnology from The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. She has taught natural history at numerous places, including the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center in Houston. She also gained experience working as a botany intern at the Smithsonian Institution and as a biological technician at Glacier National Park. She taught science at The Kinkaid School in Houston for 9 years. Maggie has led natural history field trips to numerous places in Texas and, together with her husband, Bob, to Trinidad and Tobago and to Glacier National Park, and she has lectured on many topics for nature centers and conservation organizations.
Bob has extensive natural history experience with a focus on field ornithology and dragonflies and damselflies. He has a B.A. in Biology (ecology emphasis) from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in Zoology from the Aquatic Ecology Program at Virginia Tech. Bob has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Katy Prairie Conservancy since its founding in 1992. He has been Chairman of the Ornithology Group of Houston's Outdoor Nature Club; he was Compiler of the Buffalo Bayou, Texas, Christmas Bird Count for 21 years (1984-2005); and he was a founder and Compiler of the Brazos Bend, Texas, CBC. 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. On the job he has addressed such diverse issues as endangered species, wetlands, archaeology, 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 by Tetra Tech, an environmental consulting company.
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 Kevin T. Karlson. Kevin Karlson is an accomplished birder, author, professional tour leader and wildlife photographer who has published numerous articles on bird identification and natural history for an assortment of magazines and journals. A former photo editor for North American Birds, he currently writes the Birder’s ID column for Wild Bird Magazine. Kevin is a co-author of The Shorebird Guide (Houghton Mifflin Co. 2006) and just completed a new book for the Roger Tory Peterson Reference series at Houghton Mifflin Co. called Birding by Impression. As the sole ornithologist for Cornell’s DVD Birds of North America, Kevin prepared photos and wrote captions for over 2600 bird images. He is a regular presence at numerous Bird and Nature festivals around North America, where he gives keynote presentations and workshops on bird identification and natural history; and leads field trips to a variety of locations.
Kevin’s accommodations are graciously provided by Casa del Mar Beachfront Suites.
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Karla Klay. Karla is Executive Creative Director for Artist Boat. She has 15 years of experience integrating the sciences and the arts. She is an American Canoe Association (ACA) certified kayak and canoe instructor, and is certified in First Aid and CPR. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology. She teaches birding courses for Texas A&M University at Galveston's Elderhostel program and taught Coastal Ornithology Field Labs in 2002 for TAMUG.
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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).
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Susan Lewis. Susan is a volunteer at the NOAA sea turtle facility in Galveston and is involved with outreach/educational opportunities for the area’s Sea Turtle Restoration Project. She advocates for funding and works with international efforts for protection of sea turtles and their nesting sites, primarily in Costa Rica. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Galveston Island Nature Tourism Council.
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Richard Mayfield. Since retiring from an extensive career as a chemical engineer, Richard has been active in Galveston Ornithological Society as Club President & Board Member, and with the Friends of Galveston Island State Park as a Board Member and Birding Committee Chairman. He has also been active in his church serving on The Parish Disaster Planning Committee, the church Pastoral Council, a member of the Men’s Club, and has been instituted as an Acolyte. For recreation Richard plays golf, goes birding and travels extensively with his wife. With three children and seven grandchildren who live within 30 miles a lot of time is spent in family activities.
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Dr. Alice Anne O’Donell is a longtime Galveston resident. She is the local chair-person of the Galveston Audubon Group and a member of the Board of Houston Audubon. She has a special interest in Shorebirds and in coastal habitat, especially grasses. Her part-time day job is teaching medical students and residents in the Family Medicine Department at UTMB.
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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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Glenn Olsen. Glenn has had a passionate interest in nature, especially birds, since early childhood. As a member of the Houston Audubon Society, he has served as vice president of education and is an instructor for Audubon’s Beginning and Intermediate Birding classes. Glenn also served as an Audubon Warden monitoring colonial nesting birds and with the Nature Conservancy’s pilot project to introduce captive reared endangered Attwater’s Prairie Chickens to their preserve near League City, Texas. He also leads private birding and nature tours for groups and individuals. He has a degree in philosophy and is an independent benefits planner specializing in retirement planning. Glenn supports the conservation of habitat and educational programs about birds through memberships in the American Birding Association, American Bird Conservancy, Houston Audubon Society, Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, Texas Ornithological Society, Houston Ornithology.
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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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 Katherine Pollock. Katherine Pollock got her start beach combing during her four and a half years as a park ranger at the Galveston Island State Park. She is the author of numerous articles about beach combing and is working on a book entitled, “Galveston Beaches: A Beachcombers Guide.”
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George Regmund. George grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas spending much time on Padre Island. He has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology and joined the staff of Armand Bayou Nature Center in 1976. He served as Staff Naturalist, Senior Naturalist and Director through 2003. He returned to ABNC in November 2004 as Stewardship Biologist.
George has lead birding and natural history field trips to many areas in Texas plus Southeastern Arizona, Maine, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Trinidad & Tobago, New Brunswick, Baja California and the Yucatan.
He is now co-owner and Naturalist Guide for Skimmer Nature Tours, a natural history tour company.
Hobbies include playing guitar and bluegrass banjo, racquetball plus wood and metal work.
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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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Jim Stevenson. Jim is Director of the Galveston Ornithological Society, and a professional bird guide.
Raised by an ornithologist, he has been birding nearly 50 years, having traveled all over the world and seen over 5000 species of birds. His graduate work was conducted on bird migration in the Gulf states, which eventually led him to reside in Galveston. Jim has had four books published, and also publishes three nature newspapers himself.
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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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Patrick Walther. Patrick is a native of coastal Louisiana marshes from just east of the Sabine River. He has a B.S. from McNeese State University in Zoology and Wildlife Management, and has spent the last 20 years working with fisheries, wildlife, and wetlands along the Chenier Plains in the private sector and with various federal governmental agencies. A majority of the time has been spent working with various aspects of wetland restoration, habitat monitoring, and habitat management as well as working with various species of wildlife that are dependent on the Gulf Coast marshes. He has worked for the USFWS at the Texas Chenier Plain Refuge Complex as a wildlife biologist since 1997 and has been the Complex Biologist since 2004. Current focuses are restoring hydrology to the coastal marshes and the plight of the mottled duck.
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 Adam Wood. Adam has 19 years of birding experience around the United States and overseas, in locations like Australia, Belize, Botswana, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Iceland, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. He is employed as an Environmental Scientist with Ecology and Environment, Inc. and has been performing pre-construction avian studies for proposed wind farms, as well as wetland delineations and threatened and endangered species surveys for pipeline routing studies.
He is currently serving as the Field Trip Coordinator for the Houston Ornithology Group and has led field trips for the Houston Ornithology Group, Houston Audubon Society, and the Texas Ornithological Society during the last couple of years to destinations around Texas, especially the Upper Texas Coast. I have been involved with FeatherFest the last two years.
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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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For Further Information
Email: NatureTourismGalv@juno.com
Phone: 409.392.0841 or 1.888.425.4753
Fax: 409.737.2264
Mail: Galveston FeatherFest, P.O. Box 1468
Galveston, TX 77553-1468
FeatherFest is a project of the Galveston Island Nature Tourism Council which supports eco-tourism and education, and promotes the value of area natural habitats.
www.GalvestonNatureTourism.org
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