The first time I truly realized my fascination with birds was in 1994 when I saw the movie, Jurassic Park for the first time. There is a scene where the main character Alan Grant, a paleontologist (played by Sam Neil) is at an excavation site in the Montana Badlands before being “convinced” to come over to the island with the dinosaurs. He and his colleague Ellie Sattler (played by Laura Dern) are looking at an x-ray image showing a fossil of the now infamous Velociraptor. It was there where he called out specific parts of their bone structure that was more closely related to birds than that of lizards. Once I had learned that, that is probably where the seed had been planted for me…

But this story is about the year 2002 so we need to fast forward a few extra years…

During this time, I was about 1 month shy of turning 18 years old and about to enter in my senior year of High School. At this point in my life, I had just concluded one of the best school years of my life. I say that because I had recently taken a class called “Ornithology” that was offered every 3 years at my school. Ornithology, or the study of birds was a special elective taught by my school’s longtime biology teacher, who happened to be one of the more respected birdwatchers in the local ornithology community (I learned this later in my life…). This year also happened to be in the shadow of the greatest single tragic event in the United States history. I even distinctly remember being in that Ornithology class on that day in September and my teacher, while at a loss with words like most, encouraging us to continue on with our studies and move forward. On top of that, during this same time period, I had recently been on the slow road to recovery after being diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in the summer of my Freshman year. It was 2002 where I felt like I was finally getting back to “normal”.  

So as summer finally arrives, my family and I head off to the place we had been going for month-long stints several years in a row at this point. This was our family vacation to the small coastal town in Southeastern Massachusetts called South Dartmouth. This town is very close to the city of New Bedford, MA; a town made famous by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and once the whaling capital of the world. It also happened to be the town where my mother grew up with her 3 sisters and 1 brother. There is a lot I could say about this particular community but for now, many of those fond memories I would like to keep for myself.

Anyway, it was this particular summer in 2002 where my mom decided to put up a bird feeder on the front lawn of the house, which we had been renting for the last few years. At first, I had thought very little of it and would casually pass by it as I eagerly hopped on my bike to go meet up with friends and either head to the beach or get into trouble in someone else’s home. It wasn’t until one day I was sitting in the living room when I took a indifferent glance over at the feeder and saw a beautiful bright yellow bird with some black on its wings and head. I was stunned by its beauty! I had only been recently used to seeing local birds where I grew up in San Francisco but this was something entirely different.

A few moments later, a small black and white bird that was even smaller than the yellow bird arrived at the feeder, and then seconds later, a small brown bird with a deep red head showed up! I realized suddenly, in that moment, that there were more than just pigeons and seagulls that made up the bird family! Up until that point, my outlook on birds (besides the Jurassic Park scene)

My mom noticed the fascination I had not only in that moment but probably throughout the course of my high school year coming off the Ornithology class. She approached me and suggested that we keep track of all the different birds that we would see that summer and write them down. Instead of using a fancy journal or even computer program, she grabbed an old manila folder (who knows what used to be contained in there) and wrote at the top “Summer 2000”. The owners or previous renters happened to leave a relatively recent bird guide, which contained all the birds of the Eastern United States. That book had become my most coveted piece of literature that summer.

That summer we counted over 50 different bird species! We counted birds that visited the feeder, those wading in the shallow water down at the salt marsh, those on the beach and nearby rocks, and those birds on the golf course darting around in the trees and bushes. We even counted the birds living under the roof of our house!

Looking back on that now, it must have really spoken to the analytical brain that now currently occupies my skull. It was that itch around counting, tracking, and observing bird populations that I still find fascinating to this day. Now, with the advent of new technologies, there are several tracking programs, including one that I built of my own – but that is a story for another day…