Cuba: Premier Birding Guide Biographical Sketch
More Details about this Trip:
Arturo Kirkconnell:
Arturo Kirkconnell is a curator at the National Museum of Natural History of Cuba for the Ornithology Department.
Arturo, a native of Cuba, is recognized by many birders as the leading authority on Cuban birds. He is the co-author of two books, including A Field Guide to the Birds of Cuba, and A Birdwatchers’ Guide to Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Caymans.
He truly loves birding and ornithology, and this is his passion. His curriculum vitae includes 77 scientific papers, mostly focused on Cuban and Caribbean ornithology, natural history and conservation. At present, he is working on another project, The Birds of Cuba (that will be published by the BOU Checklist Series). Arturo completed his Bachelor of Science in biology at the University of Havana.
As part of the Museum’s efforts to collect ornithological data, Arturo has been leading birding tours in Cuba for over two decades (since 1988). To date he has guided more than 200 birding groups. He designed the present birding itinerary, and he has developed the main strategies for bird-finding in Cuba.
Clients praise Arturo for his field skills, and they also indicate that his customer service is excellent. On trip after trip, both Arturo (R1) and Arturo (R2) prove they take good care of our clients, and they work hard to meet our customers’ needs throughout the tour.
You will enjoy your birding and ornithological study experience with Arturo.
ABA Hosts:
Liz Gordon:
Liz Deluna Gordon has been a birder for 27 years. She got her start in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas where she first discovered Plain Chachalacas, the previously-unknown source of the ear-splitting noises that had awakened her on many a spring morning. After her eyes were opened to the Valleys tropical birdlife there was no stopping her. She decided her goal in life would be to introduce as many people--especially kids--as she could to the idea that birds and bird habitat were worth caring for and protecting. She became a champion of developing the local economy by caring for birds and plant life, and visiting birders. As a member of the team that founded the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival she has been hugely successful in accomplishing her goal. Liz met Jeff Gordon while selling Green Jay t-shirts for the Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Corridor Task Force and he was the first person she called once she decided to help organize the RGVBF; 20 years later they married and have been birding together ever since. Now she works by his side at the American Birding Association keeping her goals alive; a passion for birds and their habitats, birding and the birding community drives her every day.
Jennie Duberstein:
Jennie Duberstein has lived in southeastern Arizona since 2001, where she coordinates the Sonoran Joint Venture, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service program that works to conserve the unique birds and habitats of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. She is the ABA's Young Birder Liaison, managing The Eyrie (the ABA’s young birder blog) and ABA Young Birders Facebook page and providing support to other young birder programs. She has worked with young birders through the ABA and other organizations since the late 1990s, directing summer camps, leading field courses, organizing conferences, and editing young birder publications. Jennie directs the ABA's Camp Colorado, co-leads VENT's Camp Chiricahua, and is a proud member of the Leica Birding Team.
Ted Floyd:
Ted Floyd is the Editor of Birding, the flagship publication of the American Birding Association. He has published widely on birds and ecological topics. Ted has written more than 125 articles, with contributions to scholarly journals such as Ecology, Oecologia, Animal Behaviour, Journal of Animal Ecology, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution and contributions to popular magazines such as Natural History, Birdwatcher's Digest, and Birding. He has contributed chapters to textbooks and guidebooks published by Oxford University Press, Houghton Mifflin, and National Geographic. He is senior author of the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Nevada (University of Nevada Press, 2007) and author of the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America (HarperCollins, 2008).
Ted received a B.A. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Penn State University in 1995. He is currently an instructor with the American Birding Association's Institute for Field Ornithology program, and he has taught college-level courses in ecology, evolution, entomology, statistics, conservation biology, and other topics. Ted is a frequent speaker at birding festivals and ornithological meetings, and he has led birding trips and workshops throughout North America. He has lived and birded in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. In the course of his scientific research and outreach activities, he has visited and birded in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, as well as South America, Europe, and Asia.
Ted has broad interests in birding and ornithology, especially as they relate to conservation and management. In recent years, he participated in the creation of Bird Conservation Plans for Partners in Flight and in the production of Eco-Regional Plans for The Nature Conservancy. Currently, Ted is contributing to an effort to describe the nocturnal flight calls of migrating birds in western North America, and his findings are helping to clarify basic patterns of occurrence of birds on active migration in the West. His work has also highlighted the value of nocturnal flight calls as an identification aid for bird species that are otherwise easy to overlook in the field.
Nate Swick:
Nate Swick is the editor of the American Birding Association Blog, social media manager for the ABA, and the host of the American Birding Podcast. He is the author of Birding for the Curious and The ABA Field Guide to Birds of the Carolinas. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Danielle, and two young children.
