Dr. Mason Hunter Cline, 44, of Glorieta, New Mexico died on September 4, 2026. He was a beloved father, son, brother, husband, and friend. Mason was born on September 26, 1981, in Bangor, Maine, the son of Michael and Denise Cline. He grew up with his three sisters on Raymond Cape Road—just a stone’s throw from Sebago Lake, where he learned to cut, split, and stack firewood at a young age and often tagged along when his forester father cruised timber or tapped sugar maples. His childhood was a lively one, encompassing a diversity of escapades in the Maine mountains, lakes, and forests. At home, he was fascinated by dinosaurs, traded baseball cards, played trumpet, ran track and field, and loved to whip up a batch of pancakes for the entire family on Saturday mornings. He attended Raymond Elementary School and later Windham High School, graduating in 2000. Following in his father’s and elder sister’s footsteps, he studied biology in undergraduate school, which he conducted at the University of New Hampshire.

After graduating in 2004, he spent several years touring the U.S. while working as a field technician on several projects investigating bird ecology and conservation. This work took him to Hawaii, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon, California, and New Hampshire, where he joined Dr. Allan Strong’s avian ecology lab at the University of Vermont in 2007 to pursue a Master of Science. After graduating from UVM in 2009, he built on his lifelong love for birds and learning through a PhD program with Dr. Robert Cooper at the University of Georgia. He spent the next six summers researching Black-throated Blue Warblers in the North Carolina mountains, a place dear to his heart.

Following graduation from UGA, Mason became the Bird Program Manager for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. In that role, he was responsible for managing the state’s migratory gamebird populations for the entire state and represented the agency on the Central Flyway Council. During his ten years with the Department, he most relished his time in the field—watching prairie chickens dance in the early-morning light or recapturing a duck or crane that had been banded elsewhere. He secretly loved warblers the most, and every May he looked forward to his time on the Rio Chama Wildlife Management Area banding Virginia’s Warblers. Mason was an intelligent, trusted, and reliable coworker and friend, and he will be missed by the many people he worked with at the Department and across the flyway.

Mason had a remarkable knack for understanding how things worked. He loved finding something old and bringing it back to life, and was particularly skilled at restoring vintage cars, guitars, and recently, motorcycles. He believed deeply in the value of hard work and that putting things back together—fixing what was broken, making something work again, and preserving it for the future—was his way of making the world a better place. That same passion extended to his work in taxidermy, both as a tribute to the animal’s beauty and as a way for others to learn from them. Mason approached life with a strong, independent, can-do attitude and got great satisfaction from working with his hands. This outlook led him to develop skills well beyond his academic training, from woodworking and carpentry to automotive mechanics, tree felling, and home renovation.

In 2023, Mason and his wife, Joanna, welcomed their son Lindal. Lindal’s name was inspired by a caretaker that lived on Santa Cruz Island where Mason worked for the Smithsonian Institute, a place and time in his life that he greatly treasured. Lindal adored Mason and inherited his love for all automotive things. By age two, he was already picking the black-and-white repair manual off the shelf for his Dada to read to him.

Having played throughout his childhood, Mason was an avid baseball fan and enjoyed attending the local Santa Fe Fuego and Albuquerque Isotopes games. He was an excellent snowboarder, teaching lessons in his youth and continuing to ride into adulthood. Mason had a love of music and was a musician all his life. While he was an especially talented guitarist, he also played the banjo, accordion, and trumpet. He also loved traveling to new places, seeing other cultures, and exploring novel ecosystems, taking many trips birding in tropical locations over the years. Mason was an angler throughout his life and relished time spent on the water, pond fishing in his youth, fly fishing streams and rivers and, most recently, saltwater fishing. He was lucky enough to land a Blue Marlin while visiting Saint John and was especially fond of his trip with Joanna to the US Virgin Islands; it was the only place he said he’d ever go twice. Eager for any way to connect with birds and the natural world, he hunted various migratory birds and other game species. Mason was happiest spending time outside—be it birding, hiking, angling, hunting, splitting firewood, or paddling.

Mason was a strong, dependable pillar for his family and a dedicated father, brother, and son. With a sharp wit and sense of humor, he had a way of bringing laughter and levity to those around him in their times of need. Never one to take the easy way out, he was guided by an unwavering moral compass and met life’s difficult moments with tenacity and determination. While he lived many places throughout his life, home was with his family and wherever the migratory birds took him. His early departure from this world leaves a void that will never be filled and he will be greatly missed.

Mason is survived by his son, Lindal Cline; his wife, Joanna Hatt; his mother, Denise Cline; his sister, Dr. Brittany Cline and husband, Jereme Frank, and their sons, Oliver and Leif of Orono, ME; his sister, Berkley Sadana and husband, Sunpreet Sadana, and their children, Jade and Ian of Durham, NH; his sister, Logan Maxwell and husband, Cooper Maxwell of Winthrop, WA; and his beloved cousins, uncles, and aunts in Colorado, Ohio, and Kentucky. Mason was predeceased by his father, Dr. Michael Cline, and maintained a special relationship with his dad’s brother, Dr. Gary Cline.

A gathering to celebrate Mason’s life will be held at the Henderson Pavilion at Randall Davey Audubon Center in Santa Fe on November 14th at 10:30 AM. In lieu of cut flowers, please consider planting his favorite flower, poppies, or enjoying a quiet moment outside in his memory.