12/29/11

Originally from the Ohio/Indiana/Michigan area, I have been living in South Central Texas for over 25 years.  My interests in birds and nature started young.  I had bird id flash cards as a child, and there were always bird feeders in the yard.  In college, I took a Field Studies in Bird Behavior Course, taught by an auditory birder, and that is when I first started paying attention to identifying birds by their calls.  After college, I spent 5 years as a National Park Service Ranger, working in such diverse habitats as the Colorado Rockies, the Lake Superior shoreline of Michigan, the deserts of California, the plateau lands of New Mexico, the forest and prairies of South Dakota, urban Missouri, the canyon lands of Utah/Arizona, and the Hill Country of Texas.  After landing in Texas, I took a position in a research lab at the UTHSCSA (University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio), and that is where I continue to work today. 

My birding resume:

• several years on the bird survey team for Friedrich Wilderness Park, a city park in San Antonio, Texas

• 17 years as a field biologist for the Endangered Species Project at Camp Bullis, a military reservation outside of San Antonio, studying Golden-cheeked Warblers and Black-capped Vireos

• yearly participation in the San Antonio Audubon Christmas Bird Count and the New Braunfels Christmas Bird Count.

I live north of San Antonio, Texas in Blanco County, on the eastern edge of the Edwards Plateau.  My yard is an acre of native Hill Country vegetation, including a limestone ridge, and overlooks a small lake.  Central Texas has the distinction on lying on the western edge of many eastern species ranges; and the eastern edge of many western species ranges, and is on a major migration route, so you never know what might show up.  My current yard bird species list stands at 205 (as of 9/2011).