Maggie birding in her "extended back yard" - on vacation in Alaska
Photo by Devin Riley
Who Made This Site
Hi! My name is Maggie Riley, and I've been a backyard birder for many years now. I guess the "us" in "About Us" would be me and the LBBs!
I've taught birding to kids as a naturalist at outdoor science schools, and I've shared the joys of birding with adults as a park ranger in Yosemite, also. (Do you know what John Muir's favorite bird was?)
I love to travel far beyond my backyard, and wouldn't think of doing it without a pair of binoculars! I've watched birds from the tropics to the arctic, and now live in the beautiful Eastern Sierra of California, where our species assemblage includes birds from mountains, desert, and coast. On the same day I can see flocks of White Pelicans and seagulls, yellow-headed blackbirds and black-throated hummingbirds, mountain chickadees and spotted sandpipers!
While I have tried to generalize this site to be useful to anyone, anywhere, who would like to start watching birds in their backyard, I live in California and have spent most of my birding life in the West, so the focus is most likely Western North America. I added a calendar of birding events, just for fun, and those are almost all in California. If you have an event you would like to include, tell me about it and I will add it!
Why I Made This Site
I began this site as a class project for an XHTML/CSS web design course, but it quickly turned into a labor of love. Birds (and nature in general) are a part-time passion, along with writing, education, and the internet. I love sharing what I know, and I love learning new things, so please share something new with me.
I started the site just by brainstorming what I know and what I've taught to my students and visitors about birding over the years. I was amazed to find so many similar sites after I started looking for references and resources! Some sites are very similar, but this site mostly came right out of my head. I guess it just shows that "great minds think alike" or maybe that "bird-brained" people have the same ideas!
I Hope You Enjoy This Site!
I hope you enjoy using this site as much as I've enjoyed creating it. Please feel free to email me about anything! If you have content suggestions, additions for our calendar, questions, comments, corrections, etc. I'd be pleased to hear from you and add your input to this site.
