Website Authors & Photographers
Rich Bailowitz
Rich Bailowitz was born and raised in Queens, New York but summered as a boy at the southern edge of the Catskill Mountains where he developed his love for natural history. He collected butterflies as a youngster and most of his collection was donated to the American Museum in New York. Additional specimens are also currently housed at the Smithsonian, the McGuire Center in Gainesville Flordia, and the L.A. County Museum. He received his M.S. in Entomology from the University of Arizona in 1985 and wrote Butterflies of SE Arizona in 1991. He began his study of odonata in 2000 and, in company with local experts Doug Danforth and Sandy Upson, authored Damselflies and Dragonflies of Arizona and Sonora in 2015. He shifted the focus of his entomological research to bombyliids in 2021. He is married to Elaine Greenapple and has two adult children and two cute-as-hell grandchildren, all of whom live in the Bay Area of California.
Bob Behrstock
Bob Behrstock is a wildlife biologist, nature photographer, writer and retired tour leader living in Sierra Vista, Arizona with his partner Karen. He received his Master’s in Fisheries Biology at Humboldt State University in northern California, continuing there to teach and curate the university’s fish museum. As his interests expanded, he moved to Texas to start a bird tour company with friends. Over 39 years, he led domestic and foreign birding and natural history tours for three companies, and perhaps 200 nature festival trips (birds, butterflies, dragonflies) in several states. He has compiled Christmas Bird Counts in Mexico, participated in biological surveys at the county, federal, and international levels, and took a role in developing birding and wildlife trails in several states. He has authored or co-authored nearly 70 scientific papers, newspaper and magazine articles treating fishes, birds, butterflies, grasshoppers, and pollination, two books on Texas birds, and a guide to Southwestern dragonflies. Dozens of his bird recordings and over a thousand of his bird and insect images have been published in scientific and popular venues, and another 3,500 or so photos may be found on insect and bird identification websites. Bob continues to be amazed by Southeastern Arizona, an area where any walk into his back yard has the potential for producing a species unknown to science.
Doug Danforth
Doug is a retired middle school science teacher and avid nature photographer. Early on his interests centered on birds and plant life. Later, his interest expanded to the study of insects and other invertebrates. He is the co-author of "Damselflies and Dragonflies of Arizona and Sonora" and "70 Common Butterflies of the Southwest". For the past twenty five years he has been photographing Bombyliids in the Southwest.
Webmaster
Steve Tracey
Steve Tracey is a retired engineer, avid bird watcher and recent bee fly enthusiast. He was introduced to this project by Rich Baillowitz while seeking Rich’s help in identifying bee flies for a back yard photo book in 2023. Steve is a much better photographer than webmaster and is open to website improvement suggestions. With Steve’s newness to website development, the focus on the website has been on communicating information rather than website aesthetics. He will continue to work to improve the website and contribute photos.