Jim Wittenberger developed a fascination for birding as a teenager, a passion that carried him through to a PhD in Zoology from the University of California. As a graduate student, he studied polygamous mating behavior, territorial behavior, gender differences in parental behavior, and avian song dialects of Bobolinks in eastern Oregon, leading to publication of several empirical and theoretical papers on the species. He published a variety of subsequent papers in leading scientific journals on song behavior, colonial behavior, territorial behavior, and mammalian social behavior. These culminated in publication of a far-reaching textbook he authored on the evolution of animal social behavior, which was widely received as a significant contribution to the field. He was an invited speaker at the British Animal Behavior Society meetings in Cambridge England, and his contribution became the closing chapter of the symposium proceedings. He was honored as an Elective Member of the American Ornithologists Union and in 1983 received the Harry R. Painton Award from the Cooper Ornithological Society for best paper of the year. Shortly thereafter, he decided to enter the then relatively new field of software engineering, a career he has pursued ever since. Most recently he has been working as an independent software developer for large companies such as IBM, Intuit, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. He has traveled extensively throughout the world, including to Hawaii, Alaska, the Pribilof Islands, Central America, South America, Europe, Australia, East Africa, and much of North America. As an expression of his life-long passion for birding, he co-founded Exotic Birding LLC with Laura Fellows, a company dedicated to offering great birding and photo tours for people who want to see or photograph birds and other animals in exotic places.
