I spent many years capturing small mammals and drawing them from life for my latest book: A Peterson Field Guide to Mammals of North America. I have written and/or illustrated numerous guides, including  A Field Guide to the Mammals of Central America and Southeast Mexico, The Golden Guide to Bats of the World, Bats of Papua New Guinea, and Mammals of the Neotropics (volumes 1-3).

I am a Departmental Associate in Mammalogy at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, Canada. I have been leading nature tours since 1987, showing ecotourists the mammals and other wildlife of diverse lands from Brazil to Indonesia, and  Alaska to Venezuela. I live on the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario with my husband Mark, our two children and an assortment of pets.

My art background

I have always been fascinated with all aspects of nature, although my preference for mammals started early in life. At age 4 I kept a dead mole in a shoebox in my room for several weeks, soon followed by a huge collection of (live) pet rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, and semi-tame wild squirrels.

I studied biology at Cambridge University in England, and went to graduate school at Stony Brook, Long Island. I slipped into scientific illustration work without any formal training, more on a whim than with a great deal of thought. After illustrating several children’s books and a series of Neotropical mammal books, I decided to embark on writing and illustrating my own book on Central American mammals. This evolved into a crusade to find all the small mammal species and draw them directly from life. The book took much longer to complete than I had originally intended, but did enable me to develop my love and knowledge of obscure furry creatures.