Welcome to Dan Lane's Homepage

Howdy there, you either landed here by grave mistake, or you are looking to find some information on lil' ole' me. If the former, I suggest hitting the "back" button. If the latter, well, let me give you some background on myself. And if, by some random chance, you were looking for my big brother, Dave Lane's, homepage, click here. We're not particularly similar, so I don't know how you'd have made such an error. For one thing, he lives in New Zealand (and is a card-carrying Kiwi!) and, what's more, he doesn't study birds. Despite those minor flaws, he's a pretty cool guy anyway and you could worse than check out his website.

 

But we're straying from the topic at hand... me. Born in New Jersey, USA, in 1973, I have had a particular interest in nature as long as I can remember. My two greatest loves have been birds and bird illustration... both manifested themselves at a very young age (perhaps from about 3 or 4 years of age), and I have yet to be able to shake them. Actually, I stopped trying long ago, and now these are the things that drive me most. I have been a bird-watcher all my life, and have been drawing and painting birds (to varying degrees of success) at the same time. My attention turned to Neotropical birds in my teens, and I have never looked back. I enrolled at Louisiana State University in 1995, and received a master's degree there in 1999 studying New World barbets (family Ramphastidae; subfamily Capitoninae). While there, I was lucky enough to join John O'Neill on several expeditions to Peru, and make other forays to Bolivia and Ecuador to study birds in poorly known sites. Even after my graduation, I have remained at LSU's Museum of Natural Science as a research associate and continue to participate in research expeditions to South America.

 

Since my arrival at LSU, I have been fortunate enough to make some very good connections with other ornithologists who study Neotropical, and have been asked to illustrate several papers, some making the cover of the AOU's journal, the Auk. More recently, I have joined a team of top-notch artists who are illustrating birds for the upcoming Birds of Peru field guide (authored by Schulenberg, Stotz, O'Neill, Parker, and Lane). I have been known to accept commissions for paintings to private buyers (but mostly prefer to illustrate Neotropical species).

 

In addition to field work and art, I have been leading tours for birdwatchers. In 2006, I started working for Field Guides Inc as a full-time guide. Areas to which I have led/coled tour include North America (Quebec, Alaska, Arizona, California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida), Mexico (Colima and Jalisco, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Yucatan), Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. Take a look at the FG webpage if you want to know more.

 

 

Address:
Daniel F. Lane
LSU Museum of Natural Science
119 Foster Hall
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-3216
USA
phone: 225-578-2855
fax: 225-578-3075
email: dlane@lsu.edu
Last updated September 2007