Leaders & Office Staff
Shirley Anderson (Vice-President, Tour Operations Manager and Customized Group Services) has managed the VENT office for the last 18 years. A native Texan, she has owned travel businesses in both San Francisco and Austin during her 28-year tenure in the travel industry. She enjoys reading, music, and gardening, as well as traveling the world with her husband, Victor, and daughter, Rachael.
David Ascanio, a Venezuelan birder and naturalist, has spent the last 25 years guiding birding tours throughout his native country, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, western Ecuador, 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, including some which are the only ones known to science. David speaks excellent English and combines superb birding skil...
Robert Bateman, born in Toronto, has been a keen artist and naturalist from his early days. His work is in many public and private collections, and several art museums. He was commissioned by the Governor-General of Canada to create a painting as the wedding gift for HRH The Prince Charles from the people of Canada. His work is also represented in the collection of HRH The Prince Philip, the late Princess Grace of Monaco, and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. He has had many one-man museum ...
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 33 years studying the birds and natural history of the Oriental region, in addition to New Guinea, the Southwest Pacific, and most recently Central Asia. David was once a police officer amid the streets of London's West End, but has emerged as an acknowledged authority on the birds of these ...
Herbert Byaruhanga was born in Western Uganda adjacent to Queen Elizabeth National Park and Imaramagambo Forest. His love for nature started in primary school. He is the proprietor of Bird Uganda Safaris LTD, founder member and general secretary of the Uganda Bird Guides Club, and also founder of Uganda Safari Guides Association. As a trainer of bird guides, accredited by Birdlife International's South African partner, Birdlife South Africa, Herbert has been instrumental in training bird ...
Kitty Coley is a geologist, naturalist, and avid birder who has led natural history tours for the National Geographic Society and Smithsonian Institute for over 10 years. Tour destinations have included Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, the Galapagos, the Peruvian Amazon and Andes, Chile, Antarctica, Alaska, Newfoundland, Labrador, and Iceland, as well as the western United States and Canada. Other nature travels have taken her to East Africa, Australia, Belize, Honduras, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Her ...
Rob Day became interested in birds and natural history at an early age. His fascination for birds started in Norway with the chance appearance of an elusive and striking pair of Eurasian Black Woodpeckers on a woodlot near home - a vivid childhood memory to this day. Birding in earnest started at age 10 in the then widespread suburban woods of Alexandria, Virginia, still rich in Neotropical migrants in spring and irruptive northern species in winter. Rob earned a degree in zoology at the Univ...
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...
Kim Eckert, with over 40 years of birding experience throughout the U.S. and Canada, has now been guiding birders or teaching bird identification classes for more than 25 of those years. Since the 1980s, he has annually led VENT tours to Newfoundland, Churchill, various locations in the Great Lakes and Great Plains, and to Texas—a favorite and frequent winter destination. He has authored four editions of A Birder’s Guide to Minnesota, and has written numerous articles, notes, and ...
Victor Emanuel started birding in Texas 61 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,...
John W. Fitzpatrick is a native of St. Paul, Minnesota, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1974, and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. Since 1995 he has been Director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. Previously (1988-1995), he was Executive Director of Archbold Biological Station, a private ecological research foundation in central Florida. From 1978 to 1989 he was Curator of...
Bob Fleming is one of the foremost experts on Nepal and India. He has spent most of his life in these countries studying birds and leading tours, treks, and study groups, and working in conservation. He operates his own company, Nature Himalayas. He and his father co-authored The Birds of Nepal. Bob is fluent in Nepalese, Hindi, and Urdu. He has a thorough knowledge of the fauna, flora, cultural mosaic, and human history of this fascinating region. He is skilled at handling logistics and imme...
Robert Gallardo grew up in California, and from an early age he loved nature. He started collecting butterflies at age 11 and has continued that passion ever since. He began birdwatching while attending Humboldt State University and, after graduating, went to Honduras as a Peace Corps Volunteer. During his service, he was taken in by the splendor of Neotropical birds. During the last 11 years he has seen 85% of Honduras' species, and has recorded 11 new ones. He is a contributor to North ...
TäV Garvin (Marketing and Publications Manager) has spent the last 18 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...
Chris Gaskin lives in Warkworth, to the north of Auckland, and is a "born and bred" New Zealander. He runs Kiwi Wildlife Tours and knows the birds of New Zealand intimately. After university, he worked for the government and then as a freelance wildlife artist, illustrator, and author. Chris has also worked as an exhibit designer for museums and visitor centers, including the Otago Museum's Southern Land, Southern People gallery, arguably the finest collection of New Zealand'...
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...
Peter Harrison, M.B.E. is a professional ornithologist, artist, author, and screenwriter. Widely considered to be the world's foremost authority on seabirds, Peter Harrison has written and illustrated over a dozen books of which Seabirds: An Identification Guide is considered the bible of seabird identification. Peter is only one of a handful of authors to both write and illustrate bird books. Peter has led scientific research expeditions throughout the world, from the Arctic to the Antar...
