So I decided to make a blog...

So I decided to make a blog. I had been thinking about it for a while because of all the people I run into who are totally mystified by my lifestyle, and even more mystified about how I find all of these birds that they've never heard of. It makes sense too. Getting up at five o'clock almost every morning to observe the avian world and then going to bed at nine in the evening must be a pretty alien schedule to most teenagers, let alone people in general. Even more alien to them must by my passion for birds, and it's something I can't easily explain, but I'll make an attempt at it here.

Birds are everywhere. To the trained eye or ear, one can find (by chance) all sorts of species in every tree one walks by. This makes birds the perfect subjects for the average teenager--or person--to study. But then there's the experience of bird-watching. Birds are incredibly beautiful, both in voice and appearance, and are incredibly complicated. To figure out a birds behavior, or evolution, or even identity can be a intellectual challenge, and depending on the species, a physical one too. When you see a bird as strikingly beautiful as a Black-throated Blue Warbler in real life, something you've never heard of or seen before, the natural response is to want to learn more. You just made a discovery, and you want to know more. When you do learn more, you realize that that individual probably flew hundreds of miles last night (providing that this is in the spring), and if the weather permits, will fly hundreds more tonight on it's way back to it's breeding grounds. Even more amazing is that in this bird's family—the wood-warblers—there are more than 30 other species that can be just as strikingly beautiful; birds like the Blackburnian Warbler, or the Magnolia Warbler. A great man named Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said “Ignorance is the seduction of science”, which means the simplest explanation that most scientists would have for their love of science would be that they love discovering new things. This is exactly what bird-watching is. It provides a playing field for endless discovery (since there are always more birds to see, and more to learn about those birds), and I think that's pretty epic.

A male Black-throated Blue Warbler. Image Credit Wikipedia

So this is my blog. The one thing that convinced me to get a blog and start writing was a speech Amber Naslund gave, wherein she spoke about the advantages of blogging. I figured that if certain employers, especially those who pay you to think up brand new ideas, like to see your ideas on places like blogs, then I might as well cover my bases and start now, after all, I do like to write. It's also a nice perk to be able practice my writing skills, and hey, maybe I'll get one of you interested in birds.