A Baldwin County resident who grew up on the Western Shore of Mobile Bay, Kathy Hicks is a web site designer and a graphic artist. As an avid birder, she designed the logos for Mobile Bay Audubon and BirdFest. This year, we feature Kathy’s work as a photographer and graphic artist on our poster and showcase her photography for our Thursday night event. Kathy calls herself an ‘advanced amateur’ photographer, but her work has won several awards and has been used in Forbes, Antique Road Show, Science Daily, and Outdoor Alabama. She is also an exclusive artist for iStockPhoto.com. Her show Thursday night is “A Gulf Coast Photo Journal,” a selection of her best shots, set to music.

Our Friday night speaker, Dr. Bill Summerour, is as well respected as a biologist as he is artist. His watercolor of a Purple Gallineu was featured on the 2005 BirdFest poster. A graduate of Auburn University, Bill earned his Ph.D. in zoology at Mississippi State, with a focus on the study of Cattle Egrets. He taught biology, zoology, botany, and ornithology at Jacksonville State University for more than 20 years, was a visiting professor of biology at Virginia Military Institute. He published numerous articles in Alabama Birdlife, the Journal of the Alabama Ornithological Society, and served as editor for seven years. Since retiring in 1991, he continues to photograph and paint birds and conduct research into Red Crossbills in the Talladega National Forest and Swainson’s Warbler in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Bill’s Friday night presentation, “Birding the Alabama Gulf Coast” will highlight some of the best birding spots in our area.