Member

Ellis, David H. (Non-resident)
David was born on April 7, 1945, in coastal California where his father built ships for the war. Before school age, he lived in Utah and on a farm in Wyoming, where he gained his first childhood recollections of birds of prey. During his school years, he spent winters in Denver, Colorado, but summers on the farm near Steamboat Springs. Rambling in the valleys and mountains of Colorado fixated him on a career studying endangered birds and raptors. His undergraduate studies were in Utah, followed by a PhD degree studying behavioral ontogeny of the golden eagle in Montana where he was a student of John Craighead. Thereafter he was spotted by Dr. Ray C. Erickson (another Washington Biologists’ Field Club faithful) and drawn into the small circle of endangered species biologists at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. Dave’s Patuxent work initially focused on the masked bobwhite quail. The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1985 in southern Arizona, is a direct outgrowth of that work. He also studied the demography of the peregrine falcon in Arizona and the pallid falcon in Patagonia (Argentina and Chile). In 1985, Patuxent offered him a behaviorist position in Maryland, so for 10 years he abandoned his cherished mountain west. Through work in Maryland he developed a NASA/Patuxent connection that led to satellite telemetry studies with cranes in Canada, western Siberia, and eastern Siberia, and with eagles in Venezuela, Africa, and Mongolia. His falcon work in Asia led to academician status in the Academy of Genghis Khan. His Asian work also led to early retirement to expose what he believed was corruption of various Arab and Arab-financed states in regard to the sale and purchase of raptors for use in the popular sport of falconry. In all, he has traveled to over 50 nations, written over 170 publications, four of which are books including an award-winning book on cranes of the world, now available in Chinese. In 2001, he published an adventure book about the motorized crane migrations and is now completing a volume on eagle adventures, worldwide. Dave now lives in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona with his wife Cathy. They have three grown children and three grandchildren. Dave was elected to the Washington Biologists’ Field Club in 1994. His fondest recollections are of rubbing shoulders with prominent scientists in the friendly atmosphere of Plummers Island and wandering midst the remains of, and monuments to, so many great scientists.