Sallie Satterthwaite is a bird-watcher and -listener from Concord MA and Harborside ME who loves the Cobscook area and the opportunity to help other people enjoy it. Sallie serves on the Festival planning committee.
Abby McBride
Abby McBride is a sketch biologist, MIT-trained science writer, and Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellow based in Machiasport, Maine. She uses field sketching and creative projects to explore the past, present, and future of global biodiversity (especially birds) with collaborators around the world.
Ginny Raichart
Ginny Raichart is a 200hr registered yoga teacher living in Lubec, Maine. Her vinyasa and yin classes serve the Washington County communities of Lubec, Trescott, Whiting, Cutler, Campobello Island, and beyond. Ginny discovered yoga in 2014 while healing from a running injury and fell in love with its powerful practices. She enjoys including humor and funky playlists in her vinyasa classes and currently teaches students of all ages-from children to the elderly. You can find Ginny teaching outdoor vinyasa flow classes at Stockford Park during the summer, and yin yoga at the Fitness Port in Lubec.
Minquansis Sapiel
Minquansis Sapiel (pronounced Min-Gwon-sis) is an enrolled member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe from Sipayik, one of the two Passamaquoddy reservations in Maine and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. She grew up in Sipayik overlooking the Passamaquoddy Bay and is a published author of a children’s book called “Little People of the Dawn." Minquansis received her master's degree in social work, earned her captain's license, and is self-employed as a storyteller, truthteller, and speaker providing guided tours. She has collaborated with many organizations throughout Maine speaking on various topics of Wabanaki history and culture. She is a mother of three daughters and loves photography and nature.
Bridget VerVaet
Bridget VerVaet is an environmental educator working at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. She primarily works with school and youth groups, along with teaching the occasionally adult education program or leading member bird walks. Originally from South Bend, Indiana, she has lived in Maine year-round since 2019 and has grown to absolutely treasure spring migration in Maine (but she loves a bird that you can find any time of year as well!).
Before moving to Maine, she studied biology at Indiana University Bloomington where she took an ornithology class that put a verb to what she already liked to do: birding. Up until then, it was all just bird watching sans binoculars – which was good too! In her free time, Bridget loves to be outdoors soaking up nature, crafting (especially crochet and other textile arts), cooking, dancing, or reading.
Val Watson
Val Watson has been a generalist nature nerd for as long as she's been able to go outside. She earned a bachelors and masters degree in ecology and environmental science at the University of Maine, where she did her best to focus on every natural history topic all at once. In her current work, Val leads birding and other naturalist walks in central Maine and spends the rest of her time naturalisting without an audience.
Chris West
Chris West is the assistant regional wildlife biologist for Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife out of the Jonesboro office. Chris began birding when she was a teenager growing up in New Hampshire’s White Mountains National Forest. Since the early 1990s she has lived in Maine and worked on many different bird surveys throughout the state. She has also spent time on the West Coast volunteering on bird projects, and almost a year on the Gulf of Mexico assessing colonial waterbirds for oil following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Her home is in Orland where she lives near her son, and with her dog, on the eastern channel of the Penobscot River.