About

As a child growing up in Pennsylvania, I remember my parents liking birds. They weren't avid "birders" but they put up feeders and enjoyed watching the various birds that would take advantage of the free food. They were particularly fond of the Pine Siskins and Goldfinches that would arrive by the dozens. During vacations we would cruise through marshes and wetlands fascinated by the herons and egrets we saw. I remember a trip to Florida where my father spent a long time sneaking up on a brown pelican in an effort to get a close-up photograph of the bird.He was not successful.

Apparently, this interest in birds was passed along to me. At the age of 13 I received a pair of 7 x 35 Yashica binoculars. Not the best optics in the world, but they were awesome to me. For about the next 20 or so years I had some wonderful birding experiences, including three summers on an island in the middle of Blue Hill Bay in Maine. I still remember some of my more exciting finds-  Painted Bunting at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Florida, Vermillion Flycatcher at Big Bend National Park in Texas and an American Dipper doing its thing in a little creek that fed into the Columbia River in Oregon.

And then suddenly I was an adult with a family to support. Career goals and parenting took away the luxury of birding and I stopped heading to the field. I rarely lifted my binoculars for about 20 years.

Then, on January 1, 2014 I decided it was time to get back into birding. I pursued a Kansas Big Year - not in an effort to beat anyone's record, but to encourage myself to get back out in the field to pursue an activity I once enjoyed and to explore my home state. I made it to 15 counties and saw 224 different birds. And I had a blast.

This blog was created to track my efforts to reconnect with my passion. It will document various birding endeavors, explore the new technologies that didn't exist when I first began birding, and will hopefully become a resource for those birders that are also starting over or are simply starting out. I will attempt to post at least once a week - more frequently when I make it out to the field.