Staff
Kate has always been curious about the natural world and collected field guides as a child. She pursued this interest in her undergraduate studies and received a B.A. in biology from Lewis and Clark College. While in college, she interned at the Oregon Zoo with their flighted bird show, sparking her initial interest in raptors. After graduation, she worked on a variety of wildlife field projects, including telemetry tracking whooping cranes in Wisconsin, trapping small mammals and invertebrates in Alaska, and of course, studying raptors. Kate interned with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, where she learned how to count, trap, and band migrating birds of prey, and then went on to work at the Bonney Butte HawkWatch migration site. She received her M.S. in biology from Boise State University, where she studied how noise may shape foraging and vigilance behaviors in birds.
She is thrilled to return to raptor research at HawkWatch International as a Long-term Monitoring and Community Science Field Biologist. At HawkWatch she works with CARES, the Following Forest Owls program, and assists with the operations of the migration network.
When Kate isn’t working, she enjoys painting, practicing yoga, rock climbing, or skiing with her husband Ben (who she met working at Bonney Butte!)
Favorite Raptor: Northern Harrier