April 19, 2015- Birding has become a quasi-obsession with me, as I’m sure it is for many people. I’m driving in my car and a bird flies by. I ignore traffic to see what type it is. I used to watch the Orioles play baseball. Now I try to find them in the great outdoors.

There’s no one way to bird, but here’s my method. It is a three stage process.

Stage 1-The Great Explorer. I decide on a spot to visit, mostly on weekend mornings. Camera in tow I spend part of my time actively searching for birds, part of my time passively staying in one spot and letting the birds come to me. Both methods have shown success.

I’m getting better at identifying birds, at least ones that I’ve already seen. However I snap anywhere from 75-150 pictures on my adventure. Thank goodness for digital cameras. In some cases I can look at a bird and, though I can’t identify it, I know I’ve never seen it before. Certain birds I can look at and know I already have it cataloged. The rest I’m not sure of so I take multiple shots, slightly adjusting the focus to get the clearest shot.

Stage 2-Agony and Ecstasy. Back home, I transfer my my pics onto my PC and begin the process of looking at and identifying the birds, using various forms of reference material. While I’m sure I’m not 100% correct at identifying the birds, I believe I’ve done pretty well. I will try to find someone to authenticate my pics in the future. The agony and ecstasy part is the fact that sometimes I’m amazed at the pics I take and sometimes disgusted that certain ones are as blurry as Bigfoot.

Stage 3- Make It Official. Finally, I update my website by taking images into photo editing software and cropping them to an approximate size, upload them to my site and name and update my pages.