So, why birds?
My fifth grade teacher was a bird brain. She suction-cupped a bird feeder to our classroom window and, every time a new visitor showed up, asked us to identify it. Most kids thought it was pretty dumb. And me? Might as well have fed me crack, for all the addiction it caused.
Fast forward a few years. I graduated high school, applied to college, secured a full-ride academic scholarship, then told the admissions office that I’d be going birding for a year instead. Lost the scholarship. Saw a ton of birds, traveled a lot. Ended up going to Oregon State a year later, where the staff included more ornithologists than any American university besides Cornell. Each summer, I worked on field projects in far-flung places like Panama, Ecuador, and Australia.
After graduation, I realized that I could, essentially, become a full-time bird bum. Why work a nine-to-five while the world beckoned? I spent a summer in Hawaii, then headed straight for Antarctica, where I lived for three months with two other scientists and 300,000 penguins in an icy camp with no shower. Somewhere down there, at 20 below zero, I decided that most people don’t seek enough adventure in their lives. Could I help inspire a bit of that spirit in others?
For the sake of family and friends, I started a blog in Antarctica. I’d already been writing and photographing birds for a while; I published my first magazine article at age 15, and I worked as Associate Editor of Birding magazine (still do) while writing a regular “BirdBoy” column for WildBird magazine (which lasted six years). An editor at OSU Press saw my blog, and, long story short, I wrote a book about Antarctica called Among Penguins, published in early 2011.
Since then, I have spent long field seasons studying birds in the Australian outback, the Farallon Islands, Costa Rica, Maine, and other places. My blog has evolved along with those adventures, most recently as I hiked the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada in summer 2011.
I hope you will join me in nudging the world one feather at a time. Ultimately, birds are a lifestyle. They are a reason and focus for action. In the best moments, the chase has nothing to do with wings and plumage; birds are life itself. And, on that level, I’m happy to be a birder at large.