1990s

The photo at left was taken by Jim Peterson in June, 1991, in the Davis Mountains of west Texas. I'm standing in front of the largest Alligator Juniper I've ever seen. Jim, Kelly Bryan, and I were privileged to spend a week birding private land in the high Davis Mountains where we were able to document several new breeding species for the Davis Mountains and one new breeding species for Texas (Gray Flycatcher). This same land is now owned by the Nature Conservancy.

I was fortunate to be able to spend time with Roger Tory Peterson on several occasions. In April, 1992, my wife Cheryl and I spent 10 days in Venezuela with Roger on a photography expedition. Roger wrote an article about this trip which was published in Bird Watcher's Digest.

In the early 1990s I served on the Bausch & Lomb Birding Council. Part of the results of this council are the current waterproof B&L Elite binoculars that are so popular today. The above photo, of the B&L Birding council, was taken in November, 1992, in Kansas. Left to right are: Pete Dunne, Bruce Hallett, me, Guy McCaskie, and Paul Lehman.

The shot at left shows me with a Three-toed Sloth in Panama in 1994. Unfortunately, these slow-moving animals try to cross highways and get killed regularly by passing cars. We found this guy in the highway as cars whizzed by, narrowly missing him. We stopped and I picked him up and got him off the road. I later put him in a tree which he went up as quickly as he could...which was not very fast. I was holding my cap in my hand while I also held the animal, which makes it look like the sloth had a cap on...which it did not.

Guess I had to add one of my "cop shots" in here. I spent 25 years as an Austin, Texas police officer retiring as a lieutenant in 1997. This photo was taken in August, 1996.

Free of the regulations on facial hair from a police career, I became a sort of "old hippie" for a while, I guess. The photo at left was taken in January, 1999, on the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean by Bruce Hallett. I am photographing Antarctic (Southern) Giant-Petrels feeding on a fur seal carcass. A photo of this scene can be viewed here. Scroll to the third photo down on that page.

A final photo representing the 1990s will be a shot taken 18 June 1999 at Tobe Spring, Davis Mountains, Jeff Davis Co., Texas, by Mark Adams. Left to right are Ro Wauer, me, John Karges, and Kelly Bryan. We were conducting a bird survey on Nature Conservancy property. This photo was taken about 15 minutes before we found a singing Colima Warbler, the first documented record in the U.S. away from Big Bend National Park.

Go to 2000s page here.