Pearl Barry
Pearl’s love of observing animals was fostered by a childhood spent exploring the forests and beaches of Vashon Island, Washington, where her walk to school included passing a snag that housed a family of Northern Saw-whet Owls. Pearl began working as an avian field technician in 2021, surveying American Goshawks in the Sierra Nevada and […]
Quinn Herner
Quinn was born in Illinois and spent much of his childhood exploring the woods in search of new bird species. His passion for birds began with his grandmother as they watched House Wrens nest on her back porch. Recognizing his enthusiasm, his parents supplied him with field guides to help identify birds, launching his birding […]
Washington 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 […]
Steven Marking
After encountering a gull unlike any he had ever seen before—a striking Heermann’s Gull—on a trip to the Olympic Peninsula in 2020, Steven began to pay closer attention to the birds around him. Propelled by that first gull, he soon became hooked on birding, and what began as a casual hobby quickly grew into an […]
Quinn McMahon
Quinn McMahon is a lifelong birder and avian field ecologist specializing in the bird communities and habitats of the Pacific Northwest. Raised in the Puget Sound area, he began birding sometime between the ages of five and ten after his father gave him a small book on North American raptors. That early gift set him […]
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 […]
Eric Pratt
Eric was born and raised in Corvallis, Oregon, where a love for birds developed early thanks to the influence of his parents and grandparents. By the age of ten, he had memorized The Sibley Guide to Birds, and soon after began using eBird—a tool that has shaped his birding journey ever since. He then lived […]
Braydon Luikart
Braydon was born and raised in Montana, where his fascination with wildlife began early. By age eight, he was already keeping a notebook of his daily wildlife observations—a habit that foreshadowed a future deeply rooted in field biology. Trips to South Africa in 2018 and Australia in 2019 expanded his curiosity, and birds gradually moved […]
Western WA
