Becoming a Birder

A Hesitant Start

For as long as I can remember my dad has had a passion for birds and birding, and from the time I was young child he tried to get me interested in birds and birding. Despite his persistent efforts, however, for most of my life I remained absolute in my resistance to getting into birding – after all, birds were lame and boring, right?

Eventually, beginning in around 2016, my dad and I began to go on a series of camping trips every year – camping trips which just *coincidentally* found is in counties my dad still needed to get to 100 species in to complete his since-achieved goal of seeing 100 species in each of Michigan’s 83 counties. While on these trips he kept planting seeds here-and-there; trying to convince me that, if I would just give it a try, he knew birding would be something that would interest me.

Finally in the spring of 2018 I caved and created an eBird account, and soon after accompanied my dad and his friend and birding companion John Porath on a trip to Magee Marsh for the Biggest Week in American Birding festival.