I began birding back in first and second grade when my aunt first took me to the bird banding demonstrations at Washington’s Crossing State Park and to the Spring and Fall New Jersey Audubon Cape May Weekends. This was back when the mornings started with coffee, juice and donuts before everyone set out birding around Lily Lake and the Point. Besides these trips, my early birding adventures were on many local Wyncote Audubon and Academy of Natural Sciences field trips.

My first trip outside the mid-Atlantic region was a Northeast Birding Workshop to Corpus Christi, TX in the spring of 1979. This was a high school graduation present from my aunt. For some people it is a single bird or birding experience that hooks them on birds. For me, it was my aunt’s early influence: “I would not have been bitten by the birding bug without her influence and her willingness to take me on all these trips.”

Since that initial trip to Corpus Christi, I have birded across North America, taken 20 trips to Central and South America, 8 trips to Europe, two trips to Africa and even managed to fit some birding in during a business trip to Australia. Although I consider shorebirds and raptors to be my favorite families of birds, it is really the spectacle of nature that I find truly the most appealing and attractive part of birding. Whether watching Sandhill Cranes along the Platte River in Nebraska, witnessing the wonders of the Galapagos Islands or seeing 10,000s of geese in the Netherlands, these overwhelming wonders of nature are what make travel and birding so appealing.