TIFFANY
KERSTEN
Birdie Big Year:
Elevating Women Birders
2023 Keynote:
Friday, April 28, 6:00pm
Reception at 5:30pm
Asbury United Methodist Church
7501 S. Staples Street, Corpus Christi
As Tiffany began a cross-county quest to spot hundreds of birds, she felt lost and lonely.
In the end, Tiffany set a national record – and found her way.
Tiffany
Kersten
Tiffany didn’t set out to do a Big Year, but after a series of unanticipated and serendipitous events, she suddenly found herself amidst one. As a sexual assault survivor, she spent 2021 traveling to all corners of the Lower 48 States, tallying birds and gifting personal safety alarms to women she met along the way. Her goal was to see 700 species, and to raise awareness of women’s safety in the outdoors. She ended up surpassing her goal and setting a new Lower 48 Big Year record of 726. In her address, Tiffany will lead us through the fear, empowerment struggles and healing that all played vital roles in the personal growth she experienced on this wild adventure.
Tiffany is a Wisconsin native, turned Texan by way of New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. She holds a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology from Northland College and has spent over a decade as an environmental educator, teaching raptor identification on Cape May Bird Observatory, monitoring shorebirds on Cape Cod, banding Honeycreepers in Hawaii, and finally to South Texas. Here she first worked at Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, then Quinta Mazailan World Birding Center, and finally managed the McAllen Nature Center before competing in a Lower 48 Big Year in 2021. She since founded her own bird guiding company, Nature Ninja Birding Tours. Tiffany guides primarily in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, but can occasionally be found guiding elsewhere.
