Member since: April 02, 2025

My grandfather was an avid birder. Some of my fondest memories
are helping him fill his feeders and him showing me where to look
through his binoculars. In my adult life, a few years ago, I
independently started trying to identify more birds on my usual nature
walks using the Merlin app. This lent itself to planning more frequent
nature walks, which snowballed into me getting more into birding,
which led to more walks, and so on and so forth. A few months ago, my
grandfather passed. By the time I had gotten into birding, he was too
dementia-ridden to discuss it with me with any coherence. This makes
me sad but every time I am in the woods, I feel his spirit of life
there with me and it brings me peace.