Birder

As I said on the Bio Page:

I am not an accomplished birder– I’ve never had time or leisure for that, but I am an enthusiastic one… I cut my teeth on diurnal raptors and began as a hawk watcher until a friend from Cape May got me into water fowl and what I called Sharpie bait: warblers… I am still most happy and comfortable trying to discern distant birds of prey from from a mountain hawk watch.

We see a wide variety of birds from our seasonal campsite aside the north branch of the Susquehanna River just north of the town of Northumberland. And from the boat or kayak we enjoy frequent glimpses of green herons, great blues, egrets, wood ducks, bald eagles, osprey, kingfishers, cormorants and many more.

While I don’t get the chance to be on the hawk watch as much as I would like (work… grrr…), and though I haven’t been able to afford an exotic birding tour yet, I try to wedge a bird outing into whatever business or pleasure travel I can.

In Florida we toured the Saint John’s river where I saw my first swallow-tailed kites and a purple gallinule. I got me a nice tick while hiking the dunes to see the Florida scrub jay. In Colorado we got a look at hummingbirds that are not seen this far east and my first toucan was a whole flock that took off ahead of us while we were horse back riding in the jungles of Belize. I’ll never forget the nesting perigrine falcons on the quarry cliffs behind Scrabbo Tower above my friend Vincent’s home in Newtonards, Northern Ireland, or the “buzzards” and falcons we saw above the sheep pastures and sea-side cliffs there. I’ll post some of these pictures and more on the home page as time goes on.