A childhood on a dairy farm in rural Mississippi may not seem like an auspicious beginning for a life that includes world birding and travel. However, lugging heavy suitcases is not that different from lifting hay bales, and 4:00 am starts in the dairy barn are good training for early morning birding.

A vibrant zoology professor at Millsaps College sparked Judy’s interest in birding, but for many years professional demands in hand therapy limited the opportunities to weekends and the occasional week. A year working in New Zealand stimulated Judy’s current love/hate relationship with islands—a fascination with their unique avifauna and a hatred for the destruction of human impact. Birding forays to Australia and several Pacific islands further deepened Judy’s interest in birds. Following her return to the United States, Judy and her husband moved to Idaho, where busy medical practices competed with time for other interests including birding. However, professionally-led birding trips to the Neotropics—Mexico and Panama—set the stage for what would result in a career and lifestyle change. Watching professional leaders in action and reaping the results of their skills through sightings of antbirds, motmots, and trogons were the catapult to more serious birding.

This growing interest in birding, combined with a divorce and the award of a Kellogg Fellowship in inter-American relations, started a travel lifestyle that has not stopped. The closing of her therapy practice, followed by relentless seeking of birding opportunities in the Neotropics, saw Judy working as a naturalist in lodges such as Explorer’s Inn in Peru and La Selva in Ecuador and aboard ships in the Caribbean and the Amazon and traveling throughout South America to become more knowledgeable about birds and their vocalizations. Volunteer work in Latin America with therapists and women’s groups further solidified Judy’s interest in foreign culture.

The fellowship ended in 1990, but the travel had just begun. Having become addicted to birding from extensive time already spent in Latin America (including five months in Ecuador, three months at Peru’s Explorer’s Inn, and a month in Brazil, with brief excursions to Guatemala and Trinidad and Tobago), Judy decided there was no returning to a “normal” life. Over the past 12 years, 50 percent of her time has been spent traveling, while continuing work as a therapist when in the United States. Tours and personal travel represent more than a year each in Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia, and shorter periods in Peru, Bolivia, and other countries. Judy has worked closely with Sunbird to build its South American program.

Judy’s love of world travel and birding is not limited to the New World tropics. She has led or co-led 11 of 20 WINGS tours to Australia in the past decade, and has just completed her fourth trip to the Antarctic, with the Southern Ocean currently a close second for her favorite region in the world.

An intense passion for birds combined with an unflagging interest in culture and travel, knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese, and a keenness to share birds and travel experiences with others have resulted in evaluations received at the WINGS office indicating that Judy is a superior tour leader in every respect.

Judy now lives in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

Tours

• Argentina: A Week at Iguazú Falls
• Argentina: The Pampas, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego
• Argentina: The High Andes
• Brazil: The Pantanal and Rio Cristalino Jungle Lodge
• Brazil: The Southeast Atlantic Rainforest
• Venezuela: The Tepuis and Imataca Forest Reserve
• Venezuela: The Andes, Llanos and Coast Range
• Australia: The Outback

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