Our Keynote Speaker

Six Seasons: A Birding Year in the Land of the Apache

 

Well-known guide, author, and lifelong Arizona resident, Richard Cachor "Rick" Taylor will be our Keynote Speaker at the Saturday-evening banquet. His presentation, Six Seasons: A Birding Year in the Land of the Apache, will highlight the Chiricahua Apaches’ six seasons based on transitions in nature and how those relate to birds.

Taylor may be best known for his work with trogons, especially an eight-year study of the Elegant Trogon begun in 1977 that led him to write Trogons of the Arizona Borderlands, published in 1994. During the course of his research, he reported the first Eared Quetzal seen in the U.S.

The annual Chiricahua Mountain trogon survey that he initiated in 1978 has compiled many years of important data. In 2013, Taylor teamed with Tucson Audubon to expand the survey to other Sky Islands in southeastern Arizona, with yearly surveys now conducted in the Chiricahua, Huachuca, Atascosa, Patagonia, and Santa Rita mountains.

Taylor's latest book, Birds of Arizona, is a photographic delight as well as an excellent identification resource. Currently in publication, it should be available for purchase at the banquet, where an opportunity for signing will follow his talk.

Prior books include A Birder’s Guide to Southeastern Arizona, published by the American Birding Association in 1995 and revised in 2005. Birds of Southeastern Arizona was published in 2010; that same year, Taylor also released his Location Checklist to the Birds of the Chiricahua Mountains.

Taylor founded Borderland Tours, which hosted international birding tours for nearly 40 years between 1980 and 2019 when he retired from full-time guiding. He and his wife Lynne live in a birder’s paradise in the Chiricahua Mountains.