Meet our Staff

The staff and volunteers at Hawks Aloft come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Each member of the Hawks Aloft team brings valuable knowledge, insight, and vision to the organization.

Gail Garber, Executive Director

My background for this position is non-traditional. As an artist and writer, I have written three books in another field and published numerous articles, including peer-reviewed manuscripts. Back in 1988, I met and fell in love with an educational Red-tailed Hawk. I began working as a volunteer for a local conservation organization, and it wasn’t long before I became a staff member writing training manuals, grants, editing their newsletter, etc. However, it was education that was my first love, followed by field research. Today, I thoroughly enjoy all aspects of Hawks Aloft, from working in the field studying nesting raptors along the Rio Grande bosque and songbird surveys to education programs to working with our large cadre of non-releasable education birds. I have been thrilled to write not only technical papers, but also articles about birds and nature for the general public. A selection of these can be found on my blog. In my other life, I am a professional quilt maker (Gail Garber Designs) and often travel to teach and lecture methods that I have developed in this media. My leisure time is often spent outdoors, searching for birds and more birds, but my dogs and I also enjoy the peace and quiet of our mountain home (and the birds).

Trevor Fetz, Lead Avian Biologist

I grew up in northeastern Oregon and received a B.A. in English from Whitman College. Upon realizing that my baseball career was not going to advance beyond college, and that I didn’t want to teach English, I decided to pursue my interest in nature. I received an M.S. in Environmental Studies from Southern Oregon University, and it was during that time I discovered my obsession with birds. After completing my M.S., I spent several years working for the Oregon Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit studying Spotted Owls in southwestern Oregon and two years as the project coordinator of a MAPS station for the Medford, Oregon, district of the Bureau of Land Management. I completed my Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at New Mexico State University in 2010.

Collin Adams, Field Technician

I am originally from Albuquerque, NM. I graduated high school from Albuquerque Academy in 2007 and received both a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Philosophy from Villanova University in May 2011. I am the newest member of the Hawks Aloft squad and am excited to contribute to the team in as many ways as I can. I am a birder and I enjoy camping and hiking. In 2012, I am embarked upon a New Mexico Big Year and the status of my adventures and species list can be found up to date at www.newmexicobigyear2012.wordpress.com. I am doing a New Mexico Big Year in order to learn about New Mexico’s beautiful and numerous natural offerings as well as to meet other people in my community interested in similar activities and subjects. This is my first official big time bird job and I’m extremely excited to continue to learn and grow through this work.

Cristy Davies, Marketing Coordinator

I began volunteering with Hawks Aloft cleaning cages and helping with outreach programs. Now, I am happy to have joined the staff, part-time, working on marketing and the website. Originally from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, I have lived in New Mexico for 22 years. I moved to Albuquerque to attend the University of New Mexico where I completed a M.A. in Cultural Anthropology. An event planner by trade, I have 154 years of experience in events, with 9 of those in a non-profit setting. I love to do hand embroidery and enjoy developing my own designs. In 2010 I did my first bike trek of the Pacific Coast–1200 miles. It is rewarding that my interest in raptors brought me onto the Hawks Aloft team.

Gloria Gallegos, Office Manager

I was born and raised in New Mexico, mostly in the eastern and northern parts of the state. I attended Santa Fe Community College and College of Santa Fe. I did spend a couple years in the private non-profit sector in the early 80s when I worked as Office Manager for Open Hands in Santa Fe. But most of my career, 27 years, was spent in state and local government, until retiring in 1999. Since retirement twelve years ago, I moved to Idaho and worked for a private utility construction company for 8 years, moving back to New Mexico in 2008. While working in Idaho, our company did do quite a few mitigations involving osprey nests on or near power lines. After moving back to New Mexico, I came to work at Hawks Aloft in November 2008, taking a hiatus from August 2010 until November 2011. I am very happy to be back. Although I don’t know a whole lot about birds, I can identify a few of the hawks and owls I’ve encountered. I do, however, know a whole lot about accounting, contracts and office management, which is the expertise I bring to this job.

Lauren Macfarland, Avian Biologist

As a city girl growing up in Dallas, TX, I wasn’t exactly in a nature mecca – more like small parks, golf courses and housing developments. Luckily, that changed while I was still in high school when my family moved to south Louisiana; it was there when I first discovered the woods. I attended Louisiana State University where I earned my B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries. When I started my first seasonal banding job outside of Baton Rouge, LA in 2005, I was hooked on birds. After graduating, I moved to Pennsylvania where I mapped vegetation for a nature reserve and volunteered for a bird-banding operation. I then moved out west in search of avian fieldwork and haven’t looked back. Traveling and working seasonally has been such an adventure! My experience includes passerine bird banding, nest-searching, marsh-bird and burrowing owl monitoring and forest and rangeland inventories in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and now, New Mexico.

Amelia Porter, Educator/Data Technician

Born and raised in the California Bay Area, I became interested in working with animals when I was 19. I wanted to work with reptiles. I began volunteering at the San Francisco Zoo while I was getting my B.S. in Zoology at San Francisco State University. It was there that I started working with birds of prey, where I met and fell in love with a Barn Owl. I knew then that I wanted to work with birds in some way. After graduating in January of 2009, I completed a one-year internship at the San Francisco Zoo. Then, I decided to move to Albuquerque, where I had family. I wanted to keep working with birds, so I inquired at Hawks Aloft about volunteering. They had a data entry position available, so they hired me part-time. I also volunteered to do outreach and help work with the educational birds. I began to assist with field work and then with education programs. Eventually I became part of the education team at Hawks Aloft. Although I still love reptiles, my work teaching people about our avian ambassadors and spreading our conservation message is incredibly rewarding.

Liz Roberts, Educator

I am delighted to be part of the Hawks Aloft team as a part-time educator. I’ve been working with wild birds for the past six years, rehabilitating, handling, training and educating. It is my belief that education is the key to a better future for our children and the planet. Although we may not be able to judge the exact impact we have with our education programs, I like to think that we do have a positive effect. When people understand how our society affects the environment, they are more likely to be conscious of their actions. Most of my life was spent in the south of England. I grew up in a beautiful little village just twenty miles south of London, and then spent almost five years backpacking and working around the world: Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and Asia. I met my husband, Marc, at a craft show in Burlington Vermont, 15 years ago. Since then, we moved to New Mexico and have two beautiful children, Rhianna and Brennan. By nature, I am a very creative person. I teach theater makeup to high school students and design makeup for two or three amateur plays each year. But my absolute favorite creative outlet is working with clay. I have a small pottery studio at home and am currently working on some bird designs for plates and platters. I look forward to working more with those of you I already know, and getting to know those of you I have yet to meet.

Raymond VanBuskirk, Field Technician

I am a student at the University of New Mexico, and the newest member to the Hawks Aloft family. I’m currently working on a B.S. in Biology with a concentration in conservation, and a minor in dance. Birding and wildlife research has been my life and my passion for as long as I can remember. I first started birding when I was seven years old on a camping trip to the mountains of southern New Mexico. Since then, birding has taken me from the islands of Maine to the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador. As an eighth grader my best friend and I started a banding project monitoring the three Rosy-Finch species on Sandia Crest. The Rosy-Finch Project has now become the largest of its kind and is answering many previously unknown questions about the winter ecology of Rosy-Finches. I’ve also spent many summers studying the breeding ecology of Gray Vireos, and Arizona Grasshopper Sparrows. I look forward to sharing my knowledge of New Mexico birds and working with all of the Hawks Aloft staff and volunteers.