Richard Webster and Rose Ann Rowlett live between tours in a refurbished home in Portal, Arizona, where they reside at the sufferance of the true masters of the place, the Acorn Woodpeckers. Richard claims that his heart is in the American tropics, oscillating rapidly between the Andes and Amazonia, but his increasingly frequent and enthusiastic journeys to other continents betray his love for birds and birding everywhere. A much-neglected manuscript on southern California's birds is receiving more attention as he reduces his tour schedule.

Tour participants comment frequently on Richard's wide-ranging knowledge of birds (toward which end he has burdened his sagging shelves with many more books, journals, and papers than he could ever read), and they appreciate his eager willingness to share that knowledge. He stays in shape by chasing away the cows, which are the cost of preferring open range that allows the deer and peccaries to roam freely in the absence of fences. Current preoccupations are still a re-re-re-recurring drought and playing with the trail camera that reveals the Gray Foxes, Black Bears, Bobcats, and Mountain Lions that traverse the yard as they sleep.