Spring 1970: Freshman year at Ohio State University. A guy in zoology class asks me to go bird watching. He'll pick me up Saturday, and we'll head south of Columbus to study migrants for his Ornithology 401 midterm.

Pat arrives in a rag-tag Rambler station wagon. It chugs to a state park, and we select a narrow, wooded trail. I carry no-name binoculars redeemed with S&H Green Stamps. Monstrous 20x50s adorn his chest. We walk a few minutes, then he points and whispers, "Rose-breasted grosbeak."

My birding experience is limited to wrens, woodpeckers, and cardinals. Who's this bozo kidding with a name like rose-breasted grosbeak? I aim my glasses in the general direction but have no idea what to expect.

"Do you see it?" he inquires.

"No."

"Up there," he murmurs, slipping behind and encircling me with his arms as he lowers the 20x50's to my eyes. Highly magnified branches wiggle wildly. The more I try to focus, the dizzier I become. I realize a man I do not know has his arms around me on a remote trail. I don't want to scream-so I lie.

"I see it."

"Really?" he says suspiciously. "It flew."

Luckily, it perches on a bare branch. When I finally focus on the elusive black-and-white bird with crimson ascot, I gasp. Awed by the moment, I have no clue the man beside me will share more than 35 years of future birding adventures, or that we will eventually attract these breathtaking birds to our yard.

Backyard Habitats Proliferate

In 1970 few people offered more than a simple feeder to lure birds into view. Now, enhancing backyard habitat is tremendously popular. By sprinkling a water feature here or adding plants there to provide food, shelter, and nesting cover, urban and suburban dwellers can convert a barren lawn into an oasis for wildlife.

During the past three decades, Pat and I have learned much about transforming backyards into birding hotspots. We improved yards in Mississippi, West Virginia, and Maryland for a wealth of species, including bluebirds, hummingbirds, towhees, and titmice.

Tip 1: Diversity Matters

Here in western North Carolina, we discovered a languishing mountainside farm, ripe in diversity with fruit trees, pasture, brushy fencerows, thickets, hardwood forest, and clear-running streams. To that nurturing mix, we added native meadow in lieu of lawn; beds of nectar-bearing flowers to please hummingbirds and butterflies; fruit-laden trees and shrubs; and an array of nest boxes sized for species from wrens to owls. As biologists, we know the more diverse our property is, the more wildlife it will attract.

Rose-breasted grosbeaks are generalists in food and habitat requirements, much like their cardinal cousins. Massive beaks allow them to crush and devour wild grapes, cherries, blackberries, dogwood fruits, and weed seeds. While nesting, they consume countless creeping and hopping insects, including tent and gypsy moth caterpillars, cankerworms, even potato beetles. Suburban yards, especially those shaded by maple, oak, or basswood trees, provide perfect places to balance their twiggy nests on forked limbs.

Not all of our avian guests are as easy to please. Eastern bluebirds are passionate about our pasture, returning earlier than other spring migrants to claim choice tree cavities or nest boxes near the grassy fields on our farm. Like grosbeaks, bluebirds switch from winter fruits to a high-protein diet of insects while raising young. Their best hunting occurs in mown grass rather than fields rank with weeds and grasses. Suburban birders are often very successful offering nest boxes to bluebirds because mown lawns (if the neighborhood is not drenched with lawn-care chemicals) are perfect sources of crickets, beetles, and spiders.

On our mountainside, bluebirds choose a favorite box in the south-facing pasture, where insects are prevalent in April and May. When waist-high grasses obscure insect quarry in summer, the bluebirds relocate to a regularly mown area near our garden for their second brood. Why don't we cut the pasture? We also host golden-winged warblers, whose numbers are plummeting because of habitat loss. These lovely birds, recognized by golden foreheads and gold wing patches, inhabit old fields becoming thickets. They nest at the base of sturdy plants such as goldenrod and hunt for spiders, moths, and caterpillars hidden among the leaves of young locusts, dogwoods, or viburnum shrubs. We manage for golden-winged warblers by allowing alternating portions of the pasture to mature for a decade, then clear it and begin anew.

Tip 2: Plant Wildlife Magnets

Most people who enhance backyards for birds do so in hopes of attracting a beloved species. Neighbors in West Virginia were enamored with goldfinches and began their quest to host them by hanging nyger seed feeders near the patio. Later they planted purple coneflowers and black-eyed susans – natives with seasonal seeds goldfinches relish. Another friend wanted hummingbirds in her yard, so she planted a spring-through-autumn progression of perennials – wild columbine, coral bells, bee balm, jewelweed, and cardinal flower – to supply the red, nectar-filled flowers hummers thrive on.

No matter where you live, you can enhance the surrounding habitat with plants that provide fruit, seed, nectar, or shelter – all of which act as magnets to entice target birds to your doorstep. All it takes is a bit of research using birding magazines, gardening catalogs, or the Internet to match the species you desire with plants, nest boxes, or water features that will lure them.

Tip 3: Enjoy the View

Adding key plants, growing sheltering trees and shrubs, or installing water features takes more than a weekend. Enhancing your backyard to lure new birds becomes a lifestyle. Before you undertake this effort, look around to decide where the investment makes most sense – perhaps near the patio or outside a dining room window. Then train yourself in another important behavior: Pause often to enjoy the view!

Through the years, Pat and I have developed an unspoken rule. Whenever we catch the first spring glimpse of black, white, and rose at our feeder, we grab binoculars and relive the moment we saw the bird that changed our lives.

Freelance nature writer and photographer Connie Toops lives on a 128-acre mountainside farm in western North Carolina (www.lostcovefarm.com). She has authored numerous books and magazine articles, and travels widely to speak on birding, wildlife gardening, and nature photography subjects.

The year was 1973. I was working at the Sleep Disorders Center at Stanford University and living in a tiny cottage in an older section of Palo Alto, California. I regarded my little abode as charming, though admittedly it was rather run down – clearly a fix-up special – but what I liked most about it was that it couldn't be seen from the street. A labyrinth of shrubbery – much of it dead and in desperate need of a hard prune – provided a screen and gave me a sense of security.

One weekend that May I met a guy at a softball game – my all-time favorite participatory sport. He was an excellent athlete – versatile at either first base or left field – and was also extremely tall at 6 feet 8 inches. After the game and picnic that followed some of us, including the tall guy, decided to take a road trip to the foothills of the Sierra. It was the weekend of the Calaveras County Frog Jumping Contest. I know, this is supposed to be about birds and not frogs, but it's part of the "spark." This annual cultural oddity is based upon a tall tale penned in 1865 by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) that described happenings in Angel's Camp, a gold rush town. The story is about a frog that could out-jump all other frogs and a man who realized that people might be willing to wager bets on this activity and that he might make a buck.

After that particular weekend with the tall, handsome guy named Grant, and some subsequent dates, I realized that I was crazy in love. One day he told me that he had been a bird watcher in his early teens – a hobby that, during that particular era, was looked upon with disdain by social peers.

Although always a nature lover, I had never been particularly drawn to birds. My mom always pointed out the robins and cedar waxwings that feasted upon our pyracantha berries and then staggered about in states of drunken stupor. And I guess I was vaguely aware of ducks in various park ponds; surely I fed them breadcrumbs at some stage in my development. And I do remember drawing V-shaped gulls in art class, thinking they added interest to my rather mediocre drawings.

So Grant began to show me a few birds. I didn't pay too much attention at first, but then one day, as we were relaxing in my little cottage behind the dense tangles of vegetation, he pointed out a bird that changed my life forever. It was the sound that we noticed first: not a lively song or scramble of notes, but a distinct rustling in the leaves. In addition to the swishing sounds, leaves seemed to be flying out in all different directions from one particular spot. The perpetrator was on the ground and seemed to be rather shy, never venturing far from the safety of the shrubbery. It was extremely difficult to get a good look, but we waited patiently – always a challenge for me – until the bird finally revealed itself. It was incredibly handsome: medium-sized, hooded in black with a light-colored belly and rusty red sides. Its dark wings were accented with speckles of white. The topper for me was the fire in its eyes, which were the color of rubies.

The bird was behaving in an engrossing fashion, hopping forward and backward with its feet, delving into the leaf litter – of which there was plenty – performing what Grant calls the "hop-scratch:" he has since composed a song with that very title. Between the foot action and handsome demeanor, this seemed to me to be a creature with attitude. Grant told me it was a rufous-sided towhee. This was 1973, well before the name was changed to spotted towhee. I queried Grant about the bird's behavior, and he explained that towhees were known for hunting for food on the ground, using a double scratching motion with both feet to stir up insects and seeds.

And so that was the moment when I began to notice birds. It was also my first lesson about habitat ("messy jungles in the garden are good"), about differences in bird behavior ("some birds never make it to the ground at all"), and about patience – actually, I still have difficulty on that front, though I have improved.

Some time later Grant and I traveled to Oregon to visit my parents, and my appreciation was reinforced. They had just taken a bird watching course from a local naturalist, and I found myself in the company of three individuals, all of whom were captivated by the avian world. And the local show in central Oregon was mind-boggling: majestic bald eagles, fish-eating ospreys, flashy yellow-headed and red-winged blackbirds, gaudy western tanagers, tweaky nuthatches, comely mountain bluebirds, aerially adept violet-green swallows, and cryptic common nighthawks that appeared at dusk, seemingly from nowhere, to scoop up insects mid-air while uttering haunting cries.

There was no turning back. Since that time I have traveled to every continent to watch birds, and to this day I am partial to those with red eyes. Just this morning I watched several red-eyed wonders in my own backyard: a spunky cactus wren, a sleek phainopepla, a parasitic bronzed cowbird, and scores of white-winged doves, calling with that mnemonic device – Who cooks for you? – made famous by the great Roger Tory Peterson.

I will always be indebted to this very tall man – Grant, not Roger who was pretty tall himself – for "granting" me the gift of birds. My gardens will always be tangles, but only in the interests of attracting birds – for they will forever enchant me with their beauty, behavior, and song.

"Grandpa! Grandpa!"

The year was 1950, and I was running down the path that led to the Baby Beach where my grandfather was working in his garden. The garden down at the beach was his favorite place in the world – unless, of course, he was out in Flatty, fishing for lake trout.

In 1919, Grandpa bought 100 acres of waterfront property on Lake of Bays, in the Muskoka district of southern Ontario. Over the years, the family compound had grown to include the main cottage, a boathouse, a long dock, and a number of sleeping cabins. The cottage faced south toward the open lake, while the boathouse, dock, and Baby Beach were in the shelter of a large bay that swept from the cottage lot around to the east.

The buildings and beach dominated about five of Grandpa's acres. The other 95 were untouched. White birch, white and red pine, red cedar, hemlock, oak, and maple trees made up the forest, which – along with the rocky shoreline and sandy beach – provided a wonderful and varied habitat for my growing interest in birds.

I was 11 years old, a new member of Boy Scout Troop 96, back home in Forest Hills, New York. I had decided early on that "Bird Study" was going to be the first merit badge I earned. Grandpa was a bird watcher, and he had promised to help me. I was an enthusiastic learner – perhaps too enthusiastic.

"Grandpa! I just saw an ivory-billed woodpecker!"

He put down his trowel, looked over the top of his glasses and said, "Really?"

"He was down on that old stump by the lake. He was big. Black and white. Red on his head. I looked in the book – it's an ivory-billed woodpecker."

He said again, "Really?" Then added, "Which book?"

For my eleventh birthday, my parents had given me a copy of the Audubon Land Bird Guide. Grandpa swore by his 1947 edition of Roger Tory Peterson's, Field Guide to the Birds, but I preferred Don Eckleberry's illustrations to Peterson's, so there were two bird books to look at when we got up to the cottage.

Grandpa took out his Peterson. I countered with my Audubon. And this is how I learned about the importance of not just looking at the illustrations, but of reading the descriptions, as well. And, as Grandpa patiently explained, it was within those descriptions of habitat and range where this young merit badge wannabe would come to realize exactly which large woodpecker he had seen on that early August morning.

Plate 4 of the Audubon was the page with Eckleberry's woodpecker illustrations, and there was the ivory-bill, right next to another large, black and white (with red) woodpecker.

Grandpa opened the Peterson, turned to Page 154, where there was only one very large, black and white (with red) woodpecker. A pileated woodpecker.

Grandpa then turned back to Page 145, where Peterson had two black and white illustrations of the ivory-bill, right below a 16-line description. Grandpa read from the text:

"Close to extinction – similar species: pileated woodpecker. Range – formerly primeval river-bottom forests of southern United States. Last reported from northern Louisiana (Singer Tract)." Later that day I learned that the Singer Tract was more than 1,500 miles south of Lake of Bays. But I didn't know that yet.

Unwilling to believe my large woodpecker was not an ivory-bill, I turned to the Audubon for support. But there, in the description on Page 50, I knew I was in trouble. "Since the abundant and widely distributed pileated woodpecker is frequently mistaken for this rare bird, great care should be used in verifying its identity."

And then the crusher. "Destruction of the vast forests of the South, especially the luxuriant hardwood forests of the river bottoms, has apparently doomed this splendid bird. It is so rare that any record of one is noteworthy and should be passed on at once to the National Audubon Society, which is trying to save the bird from extinction."

"But, Bruce," consoled Grandpa, "a pileated is a great bird to have seen, and it's a new one on your list."

I took some comfort in that, as he went on to explain how I shouldn't jump to conclusions, and don't just go by the illustrations. He made sure I understood that range and habitat would always be important in helping both a young Boy Scout and an old grandfather build their life lists.

I'm not sure I listened closely to the rest of Grandpa's lecture, but I certainly learned the lesson. It provided an early spark to my lifelong interest in bird watching. And the best part was that when I returned home, and Scout meetings began again, I was the only member of Troop 96 who could claim a pileated woodpecker on his life list. Of course, it wasn't as good as an ivory-bill, but the other guys didn't know that. They were plenty impressed with the pileated.

This past summer, I spent a month up at the cottage. While rummaging through the bookcase I came across Grandpa's once-new copy of his Peterson guide. In the front of the book there is a section entitled, "My Life List." Grandpa was an avid record keeper, and there are many, many checks on the four pages next to the birds he had seen at the lake. Next to "Pileated Woodpecker" there are two entries. One, a simple check mark indicating Grandpa had seen it. And then, in Grandpa's scratchy hand, the notation, "Bruce, Aug. 5, 1950."

Grandpa died in 1960, but he's still up there at the lake. He's on the forest paths, down at the Baby Beach, and with me on my early morning bird walks. He's still teaching his grandson about birds, and his grandson has started teaching his own grandchildren about them.

Oh, lest I forget – the pileateds are still up there in the woods, banging holes in the old stumps, looking for their breakfast.

I'm still waiting for the ivory-bills.

As a kid, I was a deadly predator. I spent hours and hours hunting and fishing. Even though Dad was a wildlife photographer and I worked for him in summer – mostly doing errands and yard chores – I had little if any interest in cameras or birds. The few photos I took under Dad's direction did not ignite passion.

My lack of interest in photography continued through college where I majored in English literature. Upon graduation in 1971, I was ill-prepared for the work-a-day world, and took a job as a substitute teacher in the Cincinnati public schools. A year of that was altogether too much. So I went back to work for Dad, this time full-time. In a way it made sense. I loved the outdoors, and here was a job that offered almost unlimited access. Now all I had to do was to learn how to use and love cameras.

The first part of the learning process – how to use a camera – proved embarrassingly difficult. Exposing a still picture properly in those days before anything was automatic required accurately balancing three different figures – film speed, shutter speed, and light intensity. All had their own bizarre number systems – for example, film speed was measured in ISO numbers ranging from 16 to 400; shutter speeds were in odd fractions of a second – or in some cases multiples of seconds; and light intensity was measured in an arcane unit called candlepower. Add to this things such as lens lengths, filters, reciprocity factors, depth-of-field and the mystifying task of determining an object of neutral density so you could get an accurate reflective light reading, and this former literature student nearly became a failure. It took at least a year to get consistent, decently exposed results.

The second part – learning to love photography – came later.

In 1975 we bought our first 35 mm camera, complete with a motor drive, to take on a trip to Canada's Victoria Island, which is a couple of hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. Shorebirds like black-bellied plovers, ruddy turnstones, and red phalaropes thronged there for nesting. Ducks did, too, especially common eiders. To find photo subjects we would just start walking out across the tundra to see what stirred. Shorebirds usually snuck off their nest as we approached, but if we backed off 100 yards or so and watched with binoculars, the birds would generally lead us to the nest. The eiders stayed put, and sometimes you could even reach down and touch the incubating hen. I especially remember one hen that flushed when I lingered to take a photo. She had an even dozen eggs. After we left she returned to the nest, and whenever we passed her way again we could see her still sitting tight.

But the nest that made the difference belonged to snowy owls. We spotted it literally a mile away. The female stood out like a big white plastic bag on the pristine brown and green tundra. We set up a blind some distance back and gradually moved it in as the birds grew accustomed to it. When it was finally time to photograph, I used the new 35 mm camera, which was like a toy and fun to shoot compared to the very serious and cumbersome medium-format we had been using. The owls brought in a surprising variety of prey, perhaps because lemmings were scarce that year. Included were a char (a salmon-like fish) and a variety of shorebirds. But the item I remember best was the carcass of a common eider. An eider is a big duck and the owl struggled as she flew across the barren landscape with that huge piece of meat dangling from her talons. I used the motor drive to shoot the action, following her through the lens like it was the sight of a shotgun. It was as exciting as any hunt.

But that's not the whole story. Later that day we passed by the eider nest, and the hen wasn't on it. We checked the eggs. Several had been pipped, but all were cold. The owls were eating the hen. Maybe she moved too much while the ducklings were trying to hatch. In any event, the loss of that hen meant 12 fewer young birds would be added to the world's total eider population. A dozen! This was a really graphic illustration of natural population control right before our eyes – and recorded on film. To me, this was dramatic stuff – the science of life.

During the remaining few days we had on Victoria Island the owls continued to harvest birds we had already photographed. In particular, there was a string of eider ducklings. A hen we knew with ducklings on a nearby pond was now soon swimming all alone.

That owl nest more clearly than I could have imagined illustrated the biological principles I touched upon as a wildlife photographer – and hunter and angler. For some reason, from then on, pursuit of animals with a camera rather than a gun or rod satisfied my "primitive" urges. That is not to say that I have completely given up hunting. I still enjoy being in the woods or along the stream; but when I harvest deer and turkey there is no longer sport in the kill. I want the meat – whose purity and wholesomeness I trust more than that from the supermarket. Maybe that snowy owl nest made me a better predator, because photography satisfies my need for the outdoors. Now I no longer play when I go for the kill.

My spark bird was a warbler. I was about eight, and I heard the sound of small wings splashing in a seep in the forest behind my house in Richmond, Virginia. The pool was surrounded by catbrier, and I remember dropping to my stomach to crawl toward the sound. I peeked through the vegetation and saw a blue-winged warbler in the sunlight, bathing madly. It was brilliant yellow, with a tiny black mask through its eyes, and I was very close to it. I remember thinking, "I did not know that such a thing existed. That is the most beautiful bird I have ever seen."

Soon after that, my parents ordered National Geographic's Song and Garden Birds of North America through the mail. I memorized the wood warblers and read the species accounts over and over. That same winter, a small flock of yellow-rumped (myrtle) warblers came down to forage on the bare, turned earth of our vegetable garden. Once again, I was enchanted by them – their small size and brilliant colors. So from the very start, warblers were what rang my bell, and (I'm not going to say how many years later), they still are.

I came into bird-watching in a casual sort of way, occasioned by the initial interest of my wife, who, as a kindergarten teacher, decided to add a unit on birds to her lesson plans. With her leading the way, we bought a pair of binoculars, a rudimentary bird guide, and then a more advanced one. There was nothing hardcore about this activity at first. The book and field glasses would be tossed into the backseat of the car whenever we took drives out into the country, which we did often in the spring and fall.

All of that changed quickly with a bright flash of wings one morning in May. We were driving north along the Scioto River with no particular destination in mind, when we came upon a clearing that offered a panoramic view of the waterway. I pulled the car off the road there so we could sit awhile and watch the river lazily gliding by, the reflections of the distant wooded shore glimmering on the surface. Suddenly, out of the blue, a bright object, glowing like a lump of hot coal, shot across our line of sight and disappeared into a clump of willows. It was a small bird, we realized, though from a distance one might easily mistake it for a very large, colorful insect.

Grabbing the binoculars from the back seat, we shuffled down the grassy slope of the riverbank for a closer look. And there out of quivering foliage, a luminous little creature materialized on a branch before us. It was breathtakingly beautiful – flaming orange, and sulfur yellow on its throat and breast with bold accents of white and black on its wings. Its eyes sparkled with an elfin, magical charm. Unalarmed by our presence and paying scant attention to us, the bird then proceeded to scour the leaves and branches for prey, deftly seizing juicy little insect morsels and devouring them. It moved about quickly, almost in a pixilated fashion, and with every change in position presented us with some new pleasing rearrangement of its spectacular plumage.

And then as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone – flying off unceremoniously with a loud chirp and disappearing out of sight.

We looked at each other in stunned silence and walked back to the car, feeling like we had just beheld the burning bush in the wilderness. The burning question, of course, was "What kind of bird was that?"

I had a good idea of where to look, as I reached for the bird guide and flipped immediately to the section titled "Wood Warblers." I was intrigued by these birds, namely because there were so many of them and I had yet to see one. I was beginning to wonder whether they really existed. And there it was on the top of page 267:

BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER.

I read aloud the text on the adjacent page. "A treetop warbler common in spruce-fir forests."

"Common?" I protested to my wife. "How could anything like that be common?" I demanded almost indignantly, feeling that the quasi-religious experience we had just had was somehow being slighted.

That was more than 30 years ago, and I can now say, after decades of bird watching, that Blackburnian warblers are indeed common. Relative to all other Neotropical songbirds that migrate through my home state of Ohio, relative to knowing when and where to look for them, and relative to the small window of opportunity that opens up briefly – but gloriously – in May, anyone can behold a Blackburnian warbler: one of the most splendid gems in the crown of North America's avifauna. I have encountered them every year since-on the campus where I was attending college, in the woodlands of local parks, and eventually in the white oak tree of my own backyard.

But those precious few moments on the banks of the Scioto River were transformative. They ignited the spark of ornithological passion in me. I had just touched the hem of the garment of something quite wonderful and wanted to grab hold of a whole lot more.

On a sun-splendored day in early September the young boy went outside to play in the yard of his parents' Maryland farm. But something he saw held his attention captive almost as soon as he ran out the door of the old clapboard house. Just to the right of where the dirt and grass driveway entered the yard was a tall thistle with full purple blossoms. On one of them was a brilliant, small bird, bright yellow with black wings. It was the most beautiful, perfect creature he had ever seen. His mother told him it was a goldfinch.

He decided to see what other birds he could find. The second one was a mockingbird, not nearly as attractive, yet it had big, showy white patches on its wings, a long tail that it swished around, and sometimes it would walk on the ground slowly spreading its wings as if trying to demonstrate something. And its song was loud and complex and never-ending. This was in 1949; and the boy today is still captivated by goldfinches and other birds.

Jump to August 9, 1996. At the small public library where the boy – now a grown man – worked, a man in his 60s asked for help. His clothes were dirty, his features coarse, as if he had just gotten off work from his shift at a factory where conditions were unsanitary, perhaps even dangerous. His unwashed hands, full of creases and cracks, did nothing to dispel this impression.

But he had just seen a small bird and wanted to know what it was. He said it was bright yellow with black wings and he had seen it feeding on top of a thistle plant on a purple blossom. Nothing the man said made the librarian believe he had paid attention to a bird or anything else in nature before or had ever sought out a public library to satisfy his need for information. On this day and at this place he had asked the right person.

A few years later another man came to the library, a worker for the state parks department. He described exactly the same situation, had no idea what he had seen. One could be forgiven at this point for thinking there is really something special about goldfinches. There is.

I don't know that I had an epiphany that suddenly ignited an interest in birds. Something in me is hardwired to be smitten with nature, and birds were my first source of fascination. This passion for all things feathered was already imbedded in my psyche by the time I was in early elementary school, maybe 7 or 8 years old.

The closest recollection I have to a "spark bird" involves nothing outrageous, and everyone reading this has seen scads of the first species that probably truly inflamed my imagination as a youth.

In those fantastic boyhood days, when everything was an enormous mystery and adventures lurked around every corner, my favorite place was the Olentangy River in Worthington, Ohio. We lived a block away from this strange world of jungle-like forests buffering a winding ribbon of clear water filled with fishes, turtles, and snakes. Many other interesting animals dwelt along the Olentangy, but it was the birds that really caught my curious pre-adolescent eye, and drew me back to the river time and again.

A kindred spirit and best buddy, Jeff Held, and I lived for our Olentangy River safaris. We'd dart off to the river at every opportunity, like callow Indiana Joneses. Our moms would have gone into conniptions if they had known our modus operandi for river exploration. Jeff and I would find the most buoyant, seaworthy log we could, toss it into the current, hop on and head downstream: modern-day Jim and Huck Finn. Oops-my mother will probably read this. Hopefully the statute of limitations on inappropriate pre-teen behavior has expired.

And our favorite bird-the one that always drew our oohs and aahs and was first on our list of big game trophies? The great blue heron. To us, coming upon one of these impressive beasts was like discovering a living, breathing pterodactyl. We'd round a bend on our trustworthy log, in a place as wild as the Amazonian jungle in our minds, and suddenly: GRAAAAK! Flushed from the riverbank, one of these gargantuan fish-spearers would launch itself into the air with cumbersome rows of those massive wings, uttering god-awful, frightening croaks.

We were impressed. And back for more we'd go. Jeff and I never tired of looking for those herons. To us, they epitomized the majesty and mysteriousness of a natural world we were only discovering, and to me, helped permanently cement a deep love for birds and an unquenchable thirst for learning more about them.

In the years since those early days of adventure, I've seen countless thousands of great blue herons. I still look at each one, probably a little more closely than I do other species, even those of considerably more glamour. The herons' gangly long legs, sword-like bill, inscrutable reptilian stare and overall dinosaur aura, and horrifying sound effects made an unshakable impression in my formative mind. Plus, those great blues stood nearly as tall as this cow-licked, freckle-faced fourth-grader! How could I not have been amazed?

Jeff's gone now, lost at a tragically young age. His memory, and thoughts of our Huck Finn days, nearly always flits through my mind when I cross the path of a great blue heron. In a way that only I'll understand, this magnificent heron piqued not only my interest in birds, but always will be a living tribute to the memory of one of my best friends.

Thanks in part to the great blue heron, I began a lifelong love affair with nature. Initially, I wanted to know all of the names of the birds I saw. Then came an insatiable desire to seek out those I hadn't yet seen. After that, I wanted to learn more about each species, just as friends want to get to know each other. After a while, I began to wonder what kind of plants my birds were perching in. Eventually, I became a botanist and just as smitten with flora as birds. Now, there is nothing in the natural world that won't captivate me, at least briefly, and I only wish I had a bigger brain so I could learn more about it all.

Thank you, oh great squawking fish-spearers.

I was sixteen in 1978 when the inaugural issue of Bird Watcher's Digest came out, with artwork of eastern screech-owls adorning the cover. I still have that issue, and BWD was and is a big part of my enjoyment of birds. As a youth I devoured the words within, as I still do. It almost seems surreal that now my own words appear here, and I couldn't be more honored.

Happy 30th, BWD!

A yellow warbler lit in my willow tree one long-ago August day and I have never been the same since.

I didn't know it was a yellow warbler, of course. Unlike my husband Bill, whose interest in birds had begun long before with his Eagle Scout requirement of a bird-study merit badge, I had never paid attention to birds at all. Oh sure, I remembered my mother's putting out crumbs for the cardinals every time it snowed, and I guess I could have picked out a blue jay in a crowd, but beyond that every bird looked pretty much the same to me. Dull and brown, like the sparrows that came to the feeder Bill had made when we moved into our first house. Emphasis on dull.

But on this summer day, newly returned from a vacation in the North Carolina mountains that had opened my eyes to the infinite varieties of wildlife for the first time, I was finally ready to see things that had been around me all along. So after Bill left for work and our son Dave went off to a day at baseball camp, I took my coffee out to the patio for a quiet hour in my leafy backyard before beginning my own day.

A flash of yellow feathers caught my eye high in the willow tree and I thought, that's different. I couldn't remember having seen any yellow birds at the feeder. What could it be?

I decided I would find out, and surprise Bill with the news at dinner. I had no idea I would change my life in the process.

I had never used binoculars before, and hadn't a clue as to how to find anything in a field guide, so my self-appointed task turned out to be a lot harder than I'd imagined. Miraculously, though, the bird stayed around, moving from limb to limb of course, hiding behind branches at times and even zipping over to our neighbor's yard on occasion, but always staying within binocular range and giving me every chance to get it right. I needed all the help it was offering.

Was it an evening grosbeak? A female scarlet tanager? An oriole? A goldfinch? I'd never supposed there were so many yellow birds. And all those warblers! How could anyone sort all of those out? What was I doing, even trying?

But I couldn't stop.

It took, incredibly, three solid hours, but at last came that magic moment when the bird and the book came together and I knew. It was a yellow warbler. I had even seen those reddish streaks on the breast that told me it was a male. I'd done it!

I was exhilarated. To think that such a beautiful creature was right here in my own small yard! It was worth every second of the effort. And then I realized I could hardly wait for tomorrow, for what else might I find? I didn't want to miss a single thing from that moment on…

I have been birding, and learning, ever since.