Jake Mohlmann

Jake Mohlmann holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Parks and Recreation Management from The Pennsylvania State University, where he was instrumental in forming the university’s first official Student Bird Club.

Raised in rural northeast Pennsylvania, Jake is a lifelong birdwatcher and conservationist. He has worked for New York City’s Museum of Natural History and for Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Science, and made significant contributions to the field work for the most recent edition of the Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas. But a summer in Portal, Arizona, convinced Jake that the Southwest was where he needed to be.

After graduating in 2005, Jake, assured of an hourly job with the University of Arizona, packed up his car and hit the road for Tucson. Since then he has worked on projects involving Burrowing Owls at the Salton Sea and counted secretive marsh birds in the lower Colorado River basin. He also spent a summer leading tours on St. Paul Island, isolated in the middle of the Bering Sea, and has worked on the identification and monitoring of endangered species in South Texas.  He has recently spent much time in the Mojave Desert working with the highly endangered Mojave Desert Tortoise and Golden Eagle.

It was on St. Paul that Jake lived a birder’s dream, with the first Western Hemisphere record of Northern Boobook—subject of a subsequent cover photo and article in North American Birds in 2007.

Jake and his college friend John Yerger are the founders of Adventure Birding, for which Jake led tours to destinations from Alaska to southern Mexico while specializing in southeastern Arizona. His voluminous knowledge of ornithology and natural history is enhanced by attention to detail and meticulous planning, along with a genuine gift for sharing and interpreting observations afield.

Still taken with the American Southwest, Jake also enjoys traveling in, and leading tours around, South America.

Testimonials for Jake