Exactly four months and 16 days ago an important thing happened. A quick glance at today's date will help you realize what this very important thing was. It was New Year's Eve, and whether you fell asleep in front of your television two hours before the ball dropped or drunkenly pressed your lips against those of the person next to you amid the cheers of a crowded dance club (I'll let you decide for yourselves which one I was doing), the year became 2015. And just like April showers reliably bring May flowers and May flowers, in turn, always bring pilgrims, New Years Eves bring resolutions and resolutions bring...procrastination and disappointment. I don't usually make resolutions. There isn't anything I want at the beginning of a year that I'm not striving for every other day of the year. (At least that's what I like to think.) But this year I decided to do it, thinking that if I put the small things I internally nag myself about into solid words I might have more of a chance of actually doing them. So here I am, almost five months after New Years, fulfilling one of my resolutions. I resolved to (finally) start my own blog. So there it is, the very important thing that happened: Libby decided to make a blog. Which is just absolutely wonderful news for all of you because I am interesting and hilarious and will tell you about great things.
"What great things?!" The resounding response wells up from the depths of the internet, the entirety of which is most likely watching the creation of this blog with utmost intrigue. Now now, internet, you just sit tight. The amazing and wonderful things about which I will write in this virtual space will reveal themselves in time; however, I can tell you that they will have a central theme. Anyone who knows me can probably guess that this theme will be of the feathered variety. Old friends, you already know this, but any new friends who need an introduction should know that birds make up pretty much the entirety of both my career and my hobbies. I would like to use the time I spend here to share my thoughts, musings, ridiculous obsessions, and mostly my stories about watching, learning about, studying, photographing, and just genuinely loving birds.
"Why do you like birds?" my internet audience asks in a manner befitting various extended family members and friends' parents who don't understand that birdwatching is a legitimate thing that people under 65 might spend time (a lot of it) doing and that documenting a bird's every movement or counting each bird that flies by is something that someone might make a career out of. Well, internet, I hope that the future content of this blog will communicate the WHY behind my love, but right now I am willing to explain the HOW. How did this obsession become such a THING for me?
Three years ago (really though, exactly three years ago today), I graduated college with a degree in Wildlife Conservation, with no plan beyond spending the summer loafing around South Jersey. My loafing mostly consisted of a lot of fishing, sitting in my Jeep eating takeout sushi on the beach, watching all 15 seasons of South Park, and deflecting questions from family members about why I was so very unemployed. I sent cover letters to every job posting I saw remotely relating to the wildlife field, and eventually landed a job as a naturalist at the Cape May Bird Observatory's Hawkwatch to start at the end of the summer. (Someday when I feel like doing a motivational HOW TO GET A JOB post, maybe I'll go into more detail about how I got that job because I SHOWED UP and Woody Allen once said that 90% of success is SHOWING UP etc. etc.) I went to Cape May without knowing a whole lot about hawks or really any birds at all, beyond that a Red-tailed Hawk had a red tail and that Cape May Warblers have a semi-tubular tongue so they can drink nectar when they're in the topics for the winter and then eat bugs when they're back up north for the summer (extra credit question on an ornithology test once upon a time). But to make a long story short, I spent those two months learning a hell of a lot, making a lot of friends out of some exceedingly inspiring people, and becoming totally addicted to birds. Since then I have traveled throughout the country to work on a variety of different bird research projects. My career has taken me from the mountains of the Pacific Northwest to the swamps of southern Florida and it has been adventure after adventure along the way. I've often wished that I had taken the time to write down the stories of my adventures along the way, hence my incessant self-nagging to start a blog.
So here, friends, I welcome you to my venture to share my stories and chronicle my thoughts. Cheers to you, future readers, and welcome to BirdLib.
