From a very young age, John Sterling exhibited a natural talent for species identification, but it was the rare sight-ing of a Pileated Woodpecker in Napa County, California during his fifth grade science camp that set John on his life path to becoming one of the state’s top field biolo-gists. Now having been an enthusiastic birder for over 37 years and a professional ornithologist for the past 27 years, John’s life passion for birds and bird conservation has taken him around the United States and abroad. As a native Californian, he is currently spending his time and energy in writing a book on the status and distribution of the birds of that great state, while on leave from his posi-tion as a biologist for H.T. Harvey & Associates. John’s formal education includes six years of coursework at Humboldt State University resulting in a B.A. in English Literature in addition to most of the coursework in Wild-life Ecology and Philosophy. He also studied ornithology at Cornell University and took several environmental courses at the UC Davis program in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.

John has been going on California pelagic trips from San Diego to Crescent City on the Oregon border since 1974 and has led many off northern Califor-nia, especially off Humboldt County as well as the first organized trips off Ft. Bragg during the 1980s, and more recently for Shearwater Journeys. His other pelagic experience includes several trips off North Carolina and Peru. John’s professional tour leading experiences were from 1987 to 1991 when he led birding tours to Texas, California, Ecuador, Peru and Costa Rica. John has conducted multiple years of ornithological research in Canada, Russia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ec-uador and Peru. He enjoys opportunities to meet people from other cultures who share the same love for the natural world. John particularly appreciated the two summers he spent conducting research in Russia, the homeland of his grandparents. He was able to work side by side with es-teemed Russian biologists and experience life at Russian field stations, and gain insight into Rus-sian environmentalism, not mention while seeing scores of life birds! He is happy to be able to work with the Russians who will be staffing our trip. In addition to his research and tour-leading experience, he has birded in southern China, Thailand, and Kenya. As you will notice immedi-ately when you meet him, his excitement about sharing nature with others is infectious.

John’s career in biology spans both conservation research and the environmental consulting field. For eight years, he served as an Avian Ecologist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, where he conducted research on the bird communities in the boreal forest of Russia and Canada, in the Andean forests and coffee plantations in Peru, and in all habitats in the Yucatan Peninsula and the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Prior to his position at the Smithsonian, he spent eight months on ornithological expeditions in Ecuador and seven months as a guide and re-

JOHN STERLINGLeader/Lecturer

searcher in the Amazon region in southern Peru. Throughout much of the 1980s he worked as a wildlife biologist in California for U.S. Forest Service research teams on old-growth forest wild-life in the northcoast mountains, on relationships between birds and snags in the northeastern section of the state, and on coastal forest bird ecology. John conducted the first inland Marbled Murrelet surveys in southern Oregon in 1989 and was part of a team surveying wildlife in New Mexico along the Rio Grande River for 7 months in 1982. More recently as an environmental consultant, he has put his expertise to work not only in species identification, but assessing bio-logical conditions, evaluating impacts, developing mitigation and conservation plans, and creat-ing monitoring plans.

Though insatiable in his desire to see birds everywhere they occur, John defies the stereotype of a “ticker” in that he has always emphasized the necessity of understanding the ecology of birds and their local distribution. As a biologist and birdwatcher, John has an extensive knowledge of the status, distribution and ecology of birds in California. Considered the leader of the California county birding movement, John has mentored a generation of birders to use the fun and challeng-ing experience of county birding to expand their knowledge of the status and local distribution of birds throughout the state. He saw the potential of county birding as a means for building the collective knowledge about bird distribution and now maintains a website devoted to organizing such data by county. His efforts have resulted in an exponential increase in the data available on county-level bird distribution. In 2007, he achieved a major life goal when he became the sec-ond person to have ever seen 200 or more bird species in each of California’s 58 counties. John also holds many “big day” records, including the American Birding Association national record for number of birds seen in a single county in one 24-hour period. He also was the captain and founder of the Smithsonian Bushnell World Series of Birding Team from 1994-1999, and in 2007 served as captain of the International Partners-in-Flight and International Migratory Bird Day team.

John is involved in an astonishing number of volunteer activities related to California bird con-servation. He currently serves as President of the Central Valley Bird Club, and as a board mem-ber of the Sacramento River Watershed Project and the Cache Creek Conservancy. He is a sub-regional editor for Alpine, Calaveras and Modoc counties for North American Birds and EBird, and a member of California Partners in Flight and the California Steering Committee of the In-termountain Joint Venture. He also serves on the Technical Advisory Committee of the Califor-nia Department of Fish and Game’s Bird Species of Special Concern project. He was recently a member of the California Bird Records Committee.

John is married and has two daughters, both of whom take after him with their innate skills for species identification.

Debra says: I heard about John when he was working for the Smithsonian. His reputation as an excellent and skilled field ornithologist preceded him. He has a gentle and caring nature. His in-terests include more than birds! Recently, he asked me about insects on the Antarctic voyage! There is, in fact, a book on insects of the Falkland Islands.

JOHN STERLINGLeader/Lecturer