Elisa Fernandes-McDade
Elisa grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she started birding at the age of eight. Her spark bird was a pair of Red-billed Leiothrixes scolding her and her family on a local trail. These early experiences in the “extinction capital of the world” catalyzed her decision to pursue a career in wildlife conservation. Elisa has […]
Torin Waters
Torin has had an interest in nature from a young age and began “officially” birding at 16 in his hometown of San Diego, California. Medical training took him across the country, providing birding opportunities in New York, Iowa, and various regions of California. As a parent and pediatrician, he has a passion for passing on […]
Vince Weber
Vince grew up in Minnesota, where his curiosity for the natural world first took hold. That curiosity turned into a passion for birds while attending Prescott College in Arizona, and from that point on, birding became central to both his work and way of life. Over the past decade, Vince has worked across the United […]
California Birding Highlights
Felipe Guerrero
Felipe Guerrero discovered birding nearly two decades ago while studying natural history and ecology in Prescott, Arizona. What began as a fascination grew into a long-term pursuit of exploring birdlife and sharing it with others. Before founding American Birding Guides in 2018, Felipe spent more than a decade conducting avian research, completing graduate studies, and […]
Nolan Walker
Nolan hails from Tennessee, where he began birding at the age of nine and quickly immersed himself in some of the East Coast’s most iconic birding destinations, including Cape May and the Outer Banks. His early exposure to migration, coastal birding, and the excitement of discovering new species set the foundation for what would become […]
Max McClarnon
Max grew up in southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, where a childhood spent exploring forests and creeks sparked a lifelong fascination with the living world. He originally specialized in reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates, but everything changed after taking a college ornithology class—he caught the birding bug, and birds have been at the center of his naturalist […]
Ma’ayan Peer
Ma’ayan (they/them) began as a self-described “bird skeptic,” but fell in love with birds during their mom’s 60th-birthday trip to the Amazon. Back home in California, they assumed the excitement wouldn’t translate—until owls, flickers, and other neighborhood species proved otherwise and sparked a deep, lasting passion. Raised in the Bay Area, Ma’ayan feels a strong […]
Frank Fabbro
Frank is an avid birder who first got hooked more than a decade ago. Since then, birding has taken him to every corner of Minnesota, across the U.S., and around the world. For someone who loves exploring new habitats, Minnesota has been an ideal home base. Frank has spent countless hours in the field learning […]
California
