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 in 1981 and received the Harry R. Painton Award from the Cooper Ornithological Society for best paper of the year in 1983. Shortly thereafter, he decided to enter the then relatively new field of software engineering, a career he pursued thereafter. He now devotes full time to Exotic Birding. He has traveled extensively throughout the world, including to Hawaii, Alaska, the Pribilof Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and much of North America.