Catherine Hamilton began drawing at age two, and began birding at age seven with her father. She started her first birding sketchbook at that time. Mysteriously, her parents encouraged both art and birding, and today she melds those two pursuits into her career. She has been a professional artist for 35 years, and a professional birding guide for the past 12 years.

Catherine gives keynote speeches and workshops at ornithological events around the U.S. and the world. She also leads birding and field sketching tours around the globe. As the ZEISS U.S. Ambassador for Birding, she has had some incredible experiences, and very much enjoys her role as a liaison between conservation projects and wider audiences. From a groundbreaking trip to Nagaland, India, to witness the unbelievable migration spectacle of the Amur Falcon, to making a short film on the conservation of the Northern Bald Ibis in Morocco, to meeting conservationists and raising funds for communities in Central and South America, she is honored to live a life immersed in birding.

Catherine holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Fine Art from Bennington College. Her paintings and drawings can be found in collections around the world, and her writing and illustrations have been published in the journal Nature, the Princeton University Press book The Warbler Guide, the Houghton Mifflin book Good Birders Still Don’t Wear White, Birding Magazine, the ABA Blog, the board game series Evolution, and more. Her latest work has just been released in the Birding Guide to the Greater Pasadena Area.