Scott Weidensaul is the author of nearly 30 books on natural history, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist "Living on the Wind" and his latest, the New York Times bestseller "A World on the Wing." Weidensaul is a contributing editor for Audubon and writes for a variety of other publications, including Bird Watcher's Digest and Living Bird. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and an active field researcher, studying saw-whet owl migration for more than 25 years, as well as winter hummingbirds in the East, bird migration in Alaska, and the winter movements of snowy owls through Project SNOWstorm, which he co-founded. He lives in New Hampshire, and is the chair of the Friends of Hog Island board of directors.

Seth Benz has served as Assistant to the Curator at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary,  director of Hog Island Audubon Camp, and is the current director of Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park’s Bird Ecology Program. In his current role, Seth coordinates citizen scientists’ efforts to monitor bird migrations, pelagic seabird concentrations, and biodiversity and phenology observations in the Acadia Region. Benz was recently elected to a three-year term on the Maine Bird Records Committee. Seth and wife Sue reside in Belfast, Maine with their Australian Shepherd rescue pooch Beazie.

Holly Merker has been in awe of birds and the wonders of the natural world since childhood. She shares her passion by connecting others to nature in her work as a professional birding guide and nature-based wellness specialist, award-winning author, and public speaker. Combining professional backgrounds in bird identification, art therapy, certification in nature and forest therapy and wellness counseling, and mindfulness practice, she works as a global advocate for Mindful Birding. With dedication to bird conservation, Holly has been the eBird state coordinator/data reviewer for Pennsylvania since 2005 and was a two-term voting member and Chairperson of the Pennsylvania Ornithological Records Committee. She considers herself a migration junkie and lives her life around the seasonal journeys of birds. Holly believes strongly that birding holds a key to wellbeing, co-authoring two books on this subject, and founding the Mindful Birding Network and co-hosting the Mindful Birding Podcast.

Sara Morris is a professor of Biology and the Director of the Environmental Science Program at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. She earned her MS and PhD in zoology at Cornell University.  Her research focus is bird migration, specifically in how birds use sites in-between where they breed and winter to successfully complete their migrations. At Canisius, Morris teaches classes in ornithology, vertebrate zoology, ecology and evolution.  She regularly takes her undergraduate research students to ornithological conferences to present their research projects and class students on extended field trips to areas like Fort Myers, FL, and the Galapagos Islands to study wildlife.   Morris is a Fellow of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU), the Secretary of the AOU, a council member of the Wilson Ornithological Society, and a research associate at the Buffalo Museum of Science.