The Birdbrain Q&A Team:

Lauryn Benedict is an ornithologist with 25+ years of experience asking and answering questions about birds. she is an outdoor enthusiast whose passion for birds began in college when she took a summer job monitoring piping plover and least tern nesting colonies. Baby shorebirds are hard to resist. 

In her day job, Lauryn is a professor of biology at the University of Northern Colorado, where she runs a research lab studying bird communication and teaches classes about animal ecology and evolution. She investigates the sounds and the social lives of many different species: sparrows, warblers, wrens, parrots and more. Her research has been covered by outlets including NPR, the Washington Post, and Forbes. 

Lauryn lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with her family, including six chickens. 

Jill Dugan is an editor and bird-lover from Chicago.  She grew up with her Gramma’s parakeets, and was  influenced by her Gramma’s rescuing of baby birds, which happened more often than you’d think.  One memorable summer, her grandmother found a baby hawk and brought it home to nurse.  Jill named it Hawkeye, after her favorite character from M*A*S*H.  The next day they found another hawk, and another, until they had the entire cast of the show on a perch in their backyard.  The hawks hung around for a couple of weeks before flying off to start their bird lives.

Eventually, Jill grew up and moved to the city, but when her brother found a stray parakeet, he knew who to call (he already had three large birds of his own).  So she started her own brood, with Pecker, Betty and Gus.  Now she has kids instead of birds, but her bird feeders are always full and she’s always looking up into her tree to see what she can see.  

When she’s not being bird-curious, Jill is an editor making videos for everyone from Nike to PBS.

Pam Moore is a bird-curious occupational therapist-turned-award-winning health and fitness freelance journalist, intuitive eating coach, and standup comic. She hopes her natural curiosity and her developmental stage in life (solidly middle-aged) will make up for her limited knowledge of and experience with birds. 

As an intuitive eating coach, her mission is to help women break up with the scale and move their bodies because it feels good — not as punishment. As a writer, she’s covered everything from diet culture to deadlifts for outlets including The Washington Post, Runner's World, and SELF. Pam is also an avid gravel cyclist, long-time indoor cycling teacher, certified personal trainer, six-time marathoner, and two-time Ironman finisher. Her podcast, Real Fit, features conversations with women athletes about body image, "enoughness," and more.

She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband, two daughters, and rescue lab mix.