Louie Dombroski

Inspired by a Blue Jay visiting a bird feeder when he was five years old, Louie Dombroski has been watching and studying birds ever since. After graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in Zoology, he headed to Arizona and its rich bird life, and has resided there on and off ever since. He spent several years in the 1990's guiding visiting birders in Madera Canyon while managing the Santa Rita Lodge, and in the early 2020's served as a birding ambassador at the Tucson Bird Alliance's Paton Center for Hummingbirds, where he held the enviable title of Birder in Residence.

He has participated in several ornithological research projects, such as monitoring staging shorebirds and waterfowl at a remote outpost along the Bering Sea coast in Alaska, conducting point counts in diverse habitats all over Colorado, and studying wintering grassland bird habitat preferences in northern Mexico. In addition to contributing to Arizona's Breeding Bird Atlas, he worked on Michigan's Breeding Bird Atlas (both versions I and II). His travels in pursuit of birds have also taken him to Costa Rica and Colombia as well as many corners of North America.

The shore of Lake Superior holds a special attraction for him, and he spent many seasons documenting the phenomenal waterbird migration at Michigan Audubon's Whitefish Point Bird Observatory and at several other sites in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He was actively involved in a long and successful effort to bring Whitefish Point under the protection of the United States National Wildlife Refuge system. 

He has written many seasonal bird survey reports for Michigan Audubon Society's natural history journal, and has served as a member and sometimes chair of the Michigan Bird Records Committee. His enthusiasm is evident whenever he runs into people trying to connect with birds. Louie especially enjoys the feeling of wonder and excitement he gets when seeing a bird species for the first time and says that showing other people life birds he's seen many times over is like seeing them for the first time himself.