About me

Cape Town, South Africa

I always get asked the question, “How did you get started with birding?” and I wish I had an answer! While most birders had a spark bird that caught their interest or were introduced by another birder…neither was the case for me. When I was ten, I literally woke up one morning and decided to become a birder and after a couple years of sifting through my field guide, I was hooked. Being only ten, I didn’t have the ability to travel all over to find new species. By the time I added my 50^th bird to my life list (Yellow-bellied Sapsucker), I could already identify most of the birds in North America simply because I spent every day going page-by-page through my field guide. For the next year or so I birded by myself...

After discovering that I wasn’t the only birder in the world, I started joining the local Audubon bird walks every spring. I fondly remember my first migration when I’d hurry home after each walk to add the dozen or two lifers to my life list. I was finally seeing the real counterparts to the photos in my field guide. As the years passed, my obsession became an addiction and I was soon heavily involved with the nation-wide young birder scene attending ABA camps such as the Young Birder Tracks in Arizona and Maine, Young Birder Conference in Colorado, Camp Chiricahua (VENT) in Arizona and competed in the World Series of Birding and Great Texas Birding Classic (team captain) on the ABA/Leica Tropicbirds team.  Shortly later with help from Kim Kaufman and a couple other Ohio young birders, I helped create the Ohio Young Birders Club, which has become incredibly successful and the backbone for many other state young birder clubs that have sprung up since.

Since then I’ve birded coast to coast, worked several field jobs in Ohio, Montana, New York and Alaska and traveled abroad to Central and South America, Europe and Africa. For the past two years I’ve called Cape Town, South Africa home only occasionally returning to the states for field jobs and holidays. Currently I’m working towards becoming a full-time birding guide having lead tours in the United States, Canada and South Africa for various groups. Feel free to contact me by clicking on the contact tab. As of now, Ohio is currently home.

Looking at Northern Wheaters on the Alaskan Range