Keynote Events 2024
Choose the KEYNOTE SERIES ticket for both and save $20!
The Psychology of Bird Identification
This keynote event includes a buffet meal, and will be held at the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Sun City Center.David Allen Sibley is the author and illustrator of the series of successful guides to nature that bear his name, including the New York Times bestseller The Sibley Guide to Birds. He has contributed art and articles to Smithsonian, Science, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Birding, BirdWatching, and North American Birds, and wrote an illustrated a syndicated column for The New York Times. He is the recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Birding Association and the Linnaean Society of New York’s Eisenmann Medal. He lives in Deerfield, MA.
5:30 - 7:30 pm
$40 (festival registration not required)
Link to Sibley Guides
St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, 1239 W Del Webb Blvd, Sun City Center, FL
Bird Planet - a Photography Journey
This keynote event includes a buffet dinner, and will be held at the Sun City Community Center in Sun City Center.
Birds inhabit every continent and major island and are conspicuous and loved by many. For ornithologist and National Geographic photographer Tim Laman, documenting these magnificent creatures has been a lifelong passion that has taken him from the Antarctic peninsula to the uninhabited Foja Mountains of New Guinea and more than one hundred other locations around the world. In his keynote, Tim will share his favorite bird photographs from over twenty-five years in the field, along with some of his most memorable adventures in pursuit of them. Covering a broad range of species from diverse habitats - from hornbills in the rainforest of Borneo to cranes in snowy Hokkaido, and from birds of paradise in the tree-tops of New Guinea to wandering albatross soaring over the Drake Passage, Tim's images of birds in their natural habitats are sure to inspire a greater appreciation for birds and the importance of protecting their environment, not just for the birds, but for all life on earth.
Tim Laman is a field biologist, wildlife photojournalist, and filmmaker. Since getting his Ph.D. from Harvard for pioneering research in Borneo’s rainforest canopy, his cameras have been his tools for telling the stories of rare and endangered wildlife and revealing some of earth’s wildest places. He has photographed on all seven continents, and regularly travels to some of the most remote corners of the earth to explore and document poorly known species. He is most well-known for his long-term work on birds-of-paradise and orangutans. He has published 24 feature stories in National Geographic magazine, as well as worked on natural history films for National Geographic, the BBC, and Netflix. Tim’s work has garnered numerous awards, including the overall prize Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2016, a 1st place Nature Story from World Press Photo, and the North American Nature Photography Association’s “Nature Photographer of the Year”. Tim is a fellow of the Explorer’s Club and of the International League of Conservation Photographers, as well as the co-founder of the Birds-of-Paradise Project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
5:30 - 7:30 pm $40 (festival registration not required) Sun City Center Community Hall, 1910 S Pebble Beach Blvd, Sun City Center, FL