About Me

How it all happened.

Upon meeting my soon-to-be-in-laws, I was asked, “So, are you a birder?”

Sensing my hesitation, they all said in unison, as if they had rehearsed this before: “Well, you are now!” and they chuckled heartily.

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Since meeting my husband, I’ve become, well, an accidental birder. I can’t go all day like my husband can (how does he do that?) and I can’t name species by sight, let alone by sound, like he can, but it has taken me out of my comfort zone and sent me to places I never even thought of going to before like the Amazon, Galapagos Islands, the Andes, Iceland and even undiscovered places in my own hometown.

It’s not a surprise that we married in the Spring because that’s a good time to celebrate anniversaries by taking vacations when migration occurs.

This blog, hopefully, will help others who are a lot like me understand more about birds and what they contribute to this world. And if I can convert one or two new birders along the way that would be great.

Disclosures

Most of the stories you’ll find here at The Accidental Birder are trips we fund and plan on our own. On rare occasions, I’ll work with organizations who sponsor a trip, invite me to to a press trip or provide me with product. In those instances I will disclose those relationships in or at the end of the blog post.

Other places you can find my writing

There She Goes podcast: Target Bird
The Statesider: Last Dance for the Prairie Chicken
Deep Travel: Souvenirs from the Inner Journey (anthology): Between Yelapas

There’s a memoir in the works.

When COVID-19 kept us all bound to our homes I wrote more, but outside of this blog. It started with travel writing workshops where I would gather with a group of eight other writers and worked on an essay for each 6-8 week workshop. Then, as if the year 2020 couldn’t get any worse, I received a shattering health diagnosis where there was no cure. “What’s the prognosis?” I asked the doctor, and he said, “you have five to ten years.” I now had an expiration date and realized: All this may come to a screeching halt–all this traveling and birding and discovery about myself.

And then Steve had a heart attack while birding in Mexico. That changed everything for us.

Places we were thinking of putting off until my retirement now rose higher on our list. And just when you didn’t think it could get crappier, it did. After 30 years working in Corporate America, I was laid off. Now I had time to put all this into a book.

The memoir shows how being dragged into my partner’s weird hobby has turned out to be magical. Pulling back the curtain and entering into this world of birds not only took me to extraordinary places, but it taught me that I was braver than I thought, challenging me all along the way. Readers will be able to experience my growth as I discover new places and new birds.

There are many books written by birders about birding, but this book is different because I am not an experienced or knowledgable birder or ornithologist. My memoir is a story about travel, discovery, birds, learning about oneself, love and hope. And that hope is truly the thing with feathers.