When last I posted I was sitting in a state of limbo, not quite sure what the coming weeks would bring. The car accident I was in while in Salt Lake City cast a shadow on my plans for the year, and as I dealt with contacting body shops and my insurance company, more and more sustenance was fed to the dark, lingering thought in the back of my head: “Is this the end? Is the journey over now?”
Make no mistake, never once did I ever have anything other than absolute intentions to continue this year however I would need to, but as I started hearing timetables of 4-6 weeks of the car being in the shop and it seemed possible I might not be able to get a rental during that time, I was left not knowing how to proceed. I mean, the year so far has been nothing short of unbelievable, and the support I have received so far from people messaging me on social media, emailing me, and supporting me through Patreon has been unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life; the idea of just… throwing that away was among the most gut-wrenching thoughts I have ever had. But at the same time, however, I do need to think about the future beyond this year, and had to consider in depth how these recent complications impacted that future.
Fortunately, today I received good news that meets the best-of-both-worlds: I can continue the trip, get my car repaired at a time that is convenient on my route, and get a rental to cover the time I am without that vehicle that has become my home these past eleven weeks since departing from Michigan to Arizona to begin my journey. And, the uncertainty brought by the past couple days did have a silver lining, too: it caused me to stop and reevaluate how I have been doing things so far, particularly in terms of planning and communication. So, going forward, I have decided to start making posts like these every month or so, just touching base about the journey so far and the month or so yet to come. Generally speaking these posts will contain a reflection of the previous month and some numbers as well as an outline of the months to come, but this post is a little different in that regard because I am trying to give some insight on my thoughts/planning process going forward, and as such the “The Journey So Far” section is going to be far more future-focused than that section will be in these posts going forward.
When I started this year, aside from a few short trips to northwest Ohio along the Michigan border, a trip to the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas in May 2023, and a road trip to Cape May New Jersey in September 2020, I really hadn’t done much birding outside of Michigan – and even at the time of the Cape May road trip I hadn’t seriously gotten into birding yet. I had also spent three months living in Albuquerque, New Mexico – and during that time I averaged a whopping one bird per month, leaving with only Greater Roadrunner, Curve-billed Trasher, and Rock Pigeon on my New Mexico list.
Then, on December 28th 2025, I began the drive southwest towards Arizona and the start of my People, Places, Birds journey. Along the way I did a smidge of birding in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and New Mexico on my way towards southeast Arizona, and from there the year began. Enough writing exists detailing the state-by-state travels of this year between my blog posts and the Road Map, which will have fully updated summaries of the states I have already visited and a general outline of the coming month by the end of tomorrow, and as such rather than going state-by-state I wanted to take this post as an opportunity to just reflect on the journey so far as a whole. A bit of that reflection will have to do with numbers: Lifers, states visited, people birded with, etc., but some of it will also be more abstract and reflective. Originally I had intended to do this more within each week’s blog post, but so far those have more been focuses exclusively on the events of the week they cover.
Prior to the start of this year I had 436 species on my Life List; a number which I have already surpassed this year, with 456 species having been seen this year alone. Of those 456 species, 133 have been Lifers, bringing my Life List to 589 – rapidly nearing the 600-mark only two months after having hit the 500-mark. I have linked a neat spreadsheet below that shows some data about the birds I have observed in January and February, and that spreadsheet will be updated within a few days of the end of each month.
Along this journey I have birded with 117 different birders (if you are wondering why that number is lower than the 123 number that was posted on my Home Page before this post went out, it’s because as I tallied everything up I realized that I had double-counted people who I’d birded with on multiple days), and have birded with others on 33 of the 70 days so far this year. That number, in my opinion, is far too low – I know obviously not every day is going to be spent birding with others, but I would rather change that ~47% into ~75% going forward. Which brings me to another huge point of this post, changing the way I approach making contacts. At the bottom of this post is a link to a document that lists where I have contacts and approximately when I will be visiting those states. If you look at that document, you will see that I have VERY VERY FEW contacts lined up. Now, it is absolutely possible that I am missing a few people who have contacted me so far, however I think I have consolidated all of my contacts’ information in a separate, private document. I guess the point of what I am getting at is PLEASE reach out to me if you are in an area where I don’t have many (or any) contacts. If you know people in areas where I don’t have many (or any) contacts, I would love to be put in touch with them.
Now, for some more retrospection:
I have, without a doubt, progressed significantly in my birding skills and knowledge over these past couple months, but I still have a long ways to go. The sounds of the western birds are still largely alien to me, but I am definitely becoming better with them. I honestly almost dread the fact that I am about to head east, where I will largely hear birds whose calls I am already familiar with and know quite well, just as I was starting to become more comfortable with my knowledge of the the calls of the western birds, but I know I will have plenty more opportunities to learn those calls more fully when I return west in the fall and when I move to Albuquerque after the year is over. My field experience with these birds will also definitely help me when it comes to studying them going forward – I have always been someone who learns best with in-the-field observation, but with the added context of my previous observations I should find it far easier to study, say, the difference in calls between the Gnatcatcher species.
Even with the many mistakes I have made in terms of forming contacts in the states I have already visited, I have had some incredible experiences with meeting birders across the country so far – in many different ways. Some birders have offered me incredible hospitality, others have gifted their expert knowledge of their local patch, and others still have just been fantastic company to meet and bird with, even if they aren’t a particularly knowledgeable or “expert” birder. Some birders have led to the creation of a “contact chain” as I have called it: for example, through Collin in Mississippi I joined along the Mississippi Audubon in their monthly tour of the Seaman Road Sewage Lagoon. There, I met Sandy and Rich, who invited me to stay at their home on Dauphin Island. While on Dauphin Island I birded with Andrew, and through him met Cynthia and Michele – the former of whom offered me the hospitality of staying at her house in northern Alabama on my westward passage through the northern parts of the state a month later. In Georgia I met Patrick, who put me in contact with Patty in Arkansas, who in turn put me in contact with several other Arkansas birders. These little experiences are a huge part of why I set out to do this year to begin with, and are something I hope happens more in the future.
A huge focus of this year is birding with birders across the country. Admittedly, a good chunk of the fault for my lack of contacts in some areas is because of lack of effort and organization on my part, but that is something that the pausing of the last few days has allowed me to refocus my approach to and, hopefully, it will result in better communication and planning on my part going forward. This trip has been a learning experience and this is yet another aspect of it that I am having to learn as I go; it was very easy for me at the start of the year to go “Hey, anyone want to bird with me anywhere?”, but in practice that doesn’t do much when I am sloppy with actually planning those things out – but again as I said, hopefully my new approach to those things that I will be implementing in the coming days will resolve that.
So, what exactly does that new approach mean to people who I may be birding with? Well, if you are interested in birding with me, send me a message on social media or an email – all of which are linked on my Contact page – and I will add you to my (private) contact document, as well as update that public document at least bi-weekly. Then, four weeks before I am planning on visiting your state, I will send you a message/text/email with my approximate plans for when I will be in your state and more specifically your area if you provide said information. This four-weeks-out contact will still be subject to a little change, but it should be accurate. Then, two weeks out I will follow up again, and by this point my route for your state should be mostly planned out. As a side-note, if you are wondering “are you going to be visiting X part of X state”, the answer is almost always “Yes, I will be visiting at least that general area if there is someone there I can bird with and my schedule isn’t already filled up.” – and again if you look at the document listed below as the “Contact Spreadsheet”, you will see my schedule isn’t filled up in any states for the rest of my journey except *maybe* Michigan, Montana, Ohio – but even the numbers I have listed there are assuming nobody has any scheduling conflicts, which is a major assumption.
Also, if you are thinking about reaching out but think to your self “Well, I’m not really a serious birder, he wouldn’t want to bird with me while in my state”, then to that I say: HOGWASH. As much as the problem of having too many contacts in a state might result in a headache down the road, I would absolutely rather have too many that not enough. Do you like to look at birds? Would you like to spend an hour or two together at a local park? That’s it. That’s the criteria. If you want to do more than that, or can provide more information on the area, or anything else more than that at all, then that’s great to, but the minimum standard for me wanting to bird with you is that you are, on the most basic of levels, a birder.
In the next couple of days I will get on top of updating my roadmap and providing more accurate information of my route to come, but for now I wanted to make this post as an attempt to put out some sort of insight into my plans for the future, especially as for a short while there I didn’t know what those plans entailed myself. If I am going to be in your state in the next four weeks and you have previously reached out, I will contact you tomorrow. If I don’t contact you by the end of the day tomorrow (3/12), then please reach out yourself. As I was consolidating all my contacts so far I realized I have already had three different people fall through the cracks thanks to my sloppy organization, and hopefully I can stop that number from increasing going forward.
The next month will see me finishing up birding in Colorado, a brief dip into Nebraska with a return planned later in the year, the completion of my revisits to Oklahoma and Arkansas, and the entirety of my birding in Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky. As I said, I will be reaching out to all of my existing contacts in those areas tomorrow, and if you think I should have reached out to you and I don’t by the end of the day tomorrow, please reach out to me.
Going forward, these posts will be a bit less… jumbled and rambling? I am planning on using them as an opportunity to provide insight onto what I have learned and what I am expecting out of the months yet to come, and will be posting them on whichever Friday comes between the 5th and 11th of every month. (So this post would have come out on the 7th, had I had the foresight to make this post prior to, well, when I had the idea to start writing this post this morning.) The Week Ten post will be out as normally planned, by 5pm EST on Wednesday the 12th.
Document/Trip Report Links:
First and foremost - thank you to anyone who chooses to support me in this insane adventure of mine. When I initially had this idea and began planning I didn't even consider the possibility that others would want to support me, but I am extremely grateful to those who have reached out to do so. For those who are interested in supporting me, I have set up a Patreon, which can be accessed by clicking the logo to the left (or you can send me a message via the contact page). Again, thank you for your incredibly generous support!
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Thank you again to those of you who have supported me so far, it's tremendously generous and greatly appreciated.
Follow me on my journey to see 100 species in every Lower-48 State during 2025, experience some of the incredible places and events in American birding, and meet and bird with as many local birders as possible along the way.
Posts will be made every Wednesday (I will try to have them out by 5pm, but situationally they might be a bit later) and will cover the previous Monday through Sunday. Additional posts will be made periodically with no set schedule.
