World Series of Birding: Diving Dabblers - New Jersey Audubon Society

Clockwise . Rodney Johnson , Kateri Kosek, Mark Boyd and Mandy Talpas

Diving Dabblers

On Saturday, May 10, 2025, our team will be participating in New Jersey Audubon’s World Series of Birding, now in its 42nd year. It is the longest running birding competition and fundraiser in the US.

From Rodney:

After a 13 year hiatus myself, and longtime teammate Mark Boyd decided let’s do this fun(madness?)again. We have 27 years combined experience doing this event including finishing third in 2012 and 2013. We also decided there is no way we want to do the entire state category ever again. We just want to hang out, have some fun and get some birds. We decided pretty quick, we could not do a big sit with our attentions spans. Hence we are doing the Cape Isand Cup category. Where we can do a lot of walking and even hit the same spots two or three times if need be. And not drive 400+ miles and have all that stress involved with navigated the Garden State on Mother’s Day weekend!

I recruited my long time birding companion Kateri Kosek who I met when she was still at Vassar 20 years ago. I was the president of the Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club and she was an excellent writer as well as a young up and coming birder. We have done very many Christmas bird counts and May census’s since that time. Her first visit to Cape May was in 2022 when we went to Fall festival together.

Mark suggested Mandy Talpas who owns and runs Hawaii Bird Tours. I’ve only got to bird with her once while we were filming a sizzle reel for reality television back in 2013. Unfortunately, we weren’t weird enough so Nat Geo didn’t pick it up. Go figure! We are also fellow East Stroudsburg university alumni albeit not from the same time.

We are raising money for PA Bat Rescue, a very small non profit from Pennsylvania. We are the Diving Dabblers and we approve this message!