Keynote Speaker

We are pleased to present our keynote speaker for the American Ornithological Society 2026 (AOS 2026) meeting in Amherst, Massachusetts.

David Sibley

Bird guide author and illustrator

David Sibley has been drawing birds for as long as he can remember. The son of ornithologist Fred Sibley, he started banding birds at Point Reyes at age 7, and hanging out in the ornithology department at Yale’s Peabody Museum from age nine. Growing up around ornithologists, professional birders and illustrators, and believing that “field guide author” was a real career path, he skipped college in favor of field experience. He then spent about ten years traveling around North America in a camper van, birding and sketching, with occasional work in Cornell’s Library of Natural sounds, an internship at Manomet, many seasons at Cape May Bird Observatory, and leading birding tours for WINGS. The knowledge gained from those years has been the foundation of his work writing and illustrating multiple books about birds (and one about trees) several of which became New York Times bestsellers. He now lives on an old farm in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he continues to study birds and trees, and still learns new things about them every day.

Talk Title: “You can observe a lot by just watching”

For me, drawing has always been a part of birding. It’s my method for studying birds – not just a way to record what I see, but a practice of looking carefully and deeply, and a way of testing my assumptions about what I’m seeing. Drawing turns observation into experiment, and that can turn a casual encounter with a common bird into a transcendent moment of discovery. It has helped lead me to new insights about birds, including some of the most common birds of my backyard here in the Pioneer Valley, like goldfinches and juncos. Every new insight fits into and expands my understanding of natural patterns, and that gives me a sense of my own place on the globe and across the span of time. In this talk I will discuss my process of drawing, some of my recent discoveries, and how something as simple as watching a redstart catch a gnat can be reassuring and hopeful.

For more, please visit sibleyguides.com.