“Solving Crime with Feathers:
The Casebook of a Forensic Ornithologist”

Pepper Trail received his Ph.D. in ornithology and animal behavior from Cornell in 1984 for his field research on sexual selection in the lek-breeding Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock. This was followed by post-docs at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the California Academy of Sciences, work for the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources of American Samoa, and, since 1998, as the ornithologist at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and the author of research papers in Science, Evolution, Animal Behavior, Conservation Biology, Auk, National Geographic and other journals.

Pepper initiated and continues to develop the Feather Atlas of North American Birds.