Dorian started birding in his backyard in Philadelphia at age seven. His interest grew to include the Delaware Valley and Jersey Shore during his preteen years and he attended several of Victor Emanuel’s youth birding camps as a teenager. He envisioned himself as an ornithologist until his educational rise and coincident alcoholism extinguished his birding desire. With his focus split between molecular biology and drinking, his childhood birding passion laid comatose through his twenties, rediscovered only when he finally got sober at age 30.

Anderson received his B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Stanford University before earning his Ph.D. in Developmental Genetics and Molecular Cell Biology at NYU. Moving to Boston, he spent three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Eventually exhausted by the academic rat race and searching for direction, he resigned his postdoctoral position to undertake his bicycle Big Year adventure (https://bikingforbirds.blogspot.com).

Momentum from that life-changing project opened many doors including public speaking, travel writing and tour guiding. He worked in Colombia as a consultant for the National Audubon Society and is currently a birding guide for Tropical Birding. He is an accomplished bird photographer and has just published his memoir: Birding Under the Influence: Cycling across America in Search of Birds and Recovery.

Birding under the influence