The Team
A team of ornithologists from the Smithsonian Institution will compete for the birding world's equivalent of baseball's World Series Trophy, by attempting to record more bird species within the state of New Jersey than any other team, in just one May day.
Mary Gustafson
Mary started watching birds with her grandfather at a very early age and has really never stopped. She’s competed in the World Series of Birding five previous times, never finishing lower than 5th. Mary used to be a migrant worker (bird-wise) in Cape May, NJ “just a couple of decades ago”. More recently, she’s been an avid birder in Delaware where she still holds the “big year” record for the number of birds detected in the state in one year.
She left her beloved coastal marshes for the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in 2005. She currently resides two miles from her office at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. Mary is currently working on bird conservation in Texas and northeastern Mexico as the Rio Grande Joint Venture Coordinator for Texas Parks and Wildlife.
Her specialties are:
- chip notes, or all those crazy sounds birds make other than a full song;
- speck birds, or birds so far away as to be (nearly, she claims) unidentifiable;
- beating on all the young whippersnappers on the team with her cane until they find birds.
Dave Ziolkowski
Dave Ziolkowski is the youngest member of the team and carries with him more than 15 years of professional ornithological experience. An avid birder, Dave vouches that his position as program biologist for the USGS’s North American Breeding Bird Survey is a fine melding of both worlds.
No stranger to the east coast, while he's been counting birds and leading trips throughout the US and neotropics since knee-high to a yellow rail, he hatched in northern Maryland and holds his original mid-Atlantic stomping ground close to heart. Dave's keen ear, specialties with songbirds, and ability to roll out of a vehicle at break-neck speeds are all assets that the team will be counting on to stack up an impressive Warbler list this year.
Tim Janzen
Tim Janzen is a family practice doctor in Portland, Oregon who has a passion for birding that was fostered by taking an ornithology class at George Fox College in Newberg, Oregon in 1983. He is a member of the Oregon Birds Records Committee and also leads birding trips for the Audubon Society of Portland on occasion. He particularly enjoys “Big Day” birding. His teams hold the top three Oregon Big Day records, as well as 9 out of the top 10.
He enjoys all aspects of birding, particularly birding by ear. He first participated in the World Series of Birding as a member of the Smithsonian team in 2006 and is looking forward to being on the team again in 2007. He enjoys the logistics and scouting necessary for a successful Big Day. He birds at a fast pace and with a lot of enthusiasm.
Dave Webb
Whether Dave Webb is participating in the World Series of Birding or conducting a May count in the largest, most pristine area of the upper Chesapeake Bay, if it's the second Saturday in May, you can be certain to find him in a midnight-to-midnight dash for birds someplace. From humble beginnings in a local community college birding course some 20 years ago, Dave's insatiable interest in birding found him teaching the very same course just five years later.
He is currently the top lister in his home area in northern Maryland, vice president of a chapter of the Maryland Ornithological Society, and a frequent field trip leader to all points Mid-Atlantic. In addition to his aptitude for gonzo birding and his heightened senses in night birding, this year the team will be relying on Dave's prowess as an Army statistician for up-to-the-minute progress analyses and number crunching!
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