Leaders & Office Staff
Victor Emanuel started birding in Texas 64 years ago at the age of eight. His travels have taken him to all the continents, with his areas of concentration being Texas, Arizona, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. He is the founder and compiler for 50 years of the record-breaking Freeport Christmas Bird Count, and served a term as president of the Texas Ornithological Society. Birds and natural history have been a major focus throughout his life. He derives great pleasure from seeing and hearing birds,...
Margaret Anderson (Tour Operations Manager) joined the VENT office staff in 2011, bringing over 17 years experience in the travel and tourism profession. Her career in the industry began in 1994 in the specialty leisure market, where she designed custom itineraries for independent and group travel throughout Mexico and Central America. When away from the office, Margaret (a native Texan and UT Austin graduate) enjoys spending time in Austin with her husband Michael, and traveling as often as ...
David Ascanio, a Venezuelan birder and naturalist, has spent 28 years guiding birding tours throughout his native country, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, the Amazon River, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles, Cuba, the Orinoco River, Costa Rica, Chile, and Panama. He is especially interested in bird vocalizations, and has a private library containing sounds of more than 70% of all the birds of Venezuela. David speaks excellent English and combines s...
David Bishop loves his vocation and cannot imagine anything better than exploring wild and beautiful places in Asia and the Pacific in the company of friends and clients. He has spent much of the past 37 years studying the birds and natural history of Asia and the Oriental region, in addition to New Guinea, the Southwest Pacific and, most recently, little-known parts of Africa. David was once a police officer amid the streets of London's West End, but has emerged as an acknowledged author...
Bruce Di Labio's obsession with birds and birding began at the young age of 8 when he hand-tamed Black-capped Chickadees at the family cottage at Constance Bay. From these simple beginnings emerged both a lifelong passion and career in the field of birding. In the fall of 1971, after reading the Ottawa Journal Bird Column about an upcoming Ottawa Field Naturalists bird walk, Bruce finally convinced his dad to take him to Ottawa Beach, the meeting location for Bruce's first official fi...
Pete Dunne is a birder/writer, founder of the World Series of Birding, Director of Natural History Information for the New Jersey Audubon Society, and Director of the Cape May Bird Observatory. An experienced tour leader, he is well-known for his columns and contributions to publications such as American Birds, Birding, Living Bird, Wildlife Conservation, and WildBird. He is also the author of numerous books, including Hawk-watch, A Guide for Beginners; Hawks in Flight: A Guide to Identificat...
TäV Garvin (Marketing and Publications Manager) has spent the last 21 years functioning as Victor's assistant and coordinating the publication of VENT's marketing materials. She also has 17 years of experience working in the semiconductor sales industry and in emergency operations for the state of Texas. In addition to some wonderful human beings, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo helped spark her interest in birds in 1983. She enjoys birding, reading, music, gardening, and observing all fo...
Brian Gibbons grew up in suburban Dallas where he began exploring the wild world in local creeks and parks. Chasing butterflies and any animal that was unfortunate enough to cross paths with the Gibbons boys occupied his childhood. A wooden bird feeder kit sparked a flame that was stoked by a gift of the Golden Guide and family camping trips to Texas state parks. Nearly 20 years ago Brian attended two VENT camps for young birders. Birds are now his primary interest, but all things wild c...
Héctor Gómez de Silva began birding at age eight in New York City. He published his first article about birds at age 15 while in Kenya, where he lived for six years. Since his return to his native Mexico in 1985, Héctor has acquired one of the highest Mexico bird lists at over 950 species, and since 1993 he has led numerous tours in Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Kenya, Uganda, Papua New Guinea, and New Caledonia. Héctor has a Ph.D. in ecology f...
Paul Greenfield grew up near New York City and became interested in birds as a child. He received his B.F.A. from Temple University where he was an art major at the Tyler School of Art. Since 1972, he has lived in Ecuador where his fascination for birds and art has culminated with the completion of 20 years of work illustrating the book he co-authored with Robert Ridgely, The Birds of Ecuador. Paul is very involved in saving Ecuador's avian diversity and important habitats through his inv...
John Harrison is a travel writer and lecturer, and a native of Liverpool, England. He took First Class Honors in geography at Cambridge University and a Masters Degree in planning at Liverpool University. For 20 years he worked for the UK government in various local and national capacities on planning and environment matters. John's short stories have been broadcast on the BBC and collected in book form. His first travel book, Where the Earth Ends, about South America and Antarctica...
D. Brandon Hay has served as research assistant to Ann Sutton since 1996. Together they are conducting research on migrant land birds in Jamaican mangrove forests. Brandon is also the Scientific Officer for the Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation, an organization dedicated to the protection and sustainable development of Jamaican natural resources, particularly in the Portland Bight area of Jamaica's south coast. He also serves as manager for several fish sanctuaries in the ...
Steve Hilty is the senior author of A Guide to the Birds of Colombia, and author of Birds of Venezuela, both by Princeton University Press, as well as the popular Birds of Tropical America, A watcher's introduction to behavior, breeding and diversity. He has also written a number of scientific papers on birds and plants, has described two species of birds new to science in Venezuela, and was one of a team of authors describing another new species in Colombia. He also wrote the text a...
Dion Hobcroft has been working for VENT since 2001. He has led many tours (more than 100) to Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Bhutan, Indonesia, India, China, Southwest Pacific, Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, Russia, Alaska, Tanzania, and the Antarctic. In 2007 alone Dion showed more than 2,000 species of birds to VENT clients. His informative, relaxed, and educational nature, combined with sharp eyes and ears, has established Dion as a favorite of many tour participants. His...
Denver Holt is a wildlife researcher and graduate of the University of Montana. He is founder and president of the Owl Research Institute, a non-profit organization located in Charlo, Montana. He is a field researcher and believes in long-term field studies as the primary means to understanding trends in natural history. Denver has researched owls in North and Central America, and in 2000 he was named Montana's Wildlife Biologist of the Year by the Wildlife Society of North...
Phil Jones grew up in Surrey and now lives in East Sussex, England. He began birding in the United Kingdom in 1968 while at school, where he earned a B.A. in geography. He has birded on all continents, and has taken part in banding training courses in Greece, Kuwait, Thailand, Kenya, and Colombia. Although originally a banker, Phil led bird tours for eight years before settling in Sussex and has birded in over 50 countries. He has written a number of papers for local bird societies and has al...
Kenn Kaufman is an author, artist, teacher, traveler, and naturalist who has focused on birds since the age of six—earning him the odd distinction of having received the American Birding Association's lifetime achievement award twice, in 1992 and again in 2008. Kenn is a field editor for Audubon magazine and a regular contributor to every major birding magazine. He is editor of the popular Kaufman Field Guides series, which includes volumes on North American birds (both English and ...
Kimberly Kaufman is an Ohio native whose lifelong love of the outdoors grew into a passion for birds in the 1990s. She monitored nesting Bald Eagles for the Ohio Division of Wildlife and ran bluebird trails before she began banding migrant songbirds for the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO). Kim's involvement with BSBO escalated as she became the observatory's education director in 2005 and then executive director in 2009, a position she still holds. Kim played a key role in startin...
Jeri M. Langham has a Ph.D. in plant ecology from Washington State University, and after 38 years as a professor of biological sciences at California State University in Sacramento, retired in May 2008. He received the first Outstanding Teacher Award from the newly formed College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in 1997; the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Science Educational Equity and Minority Organization of Science Students organizations in 2005; and his University's third ...
Erik Lindqvist (Tour Operations Manager) is a graduate of Pepperdine University who joined VENT in 1997. A travel veteran, Erik has over 25 years experience in the industry including stints in operations management, training, and marketing. He enjoys bicycling, outdoor activities, and spending time with his wife Lisa, stepson Brad, and twelve-year-old son Karl.
