Birds

Over the past couple of years, we have gotten into bird watching.  Several factors led to us getting involved in this "sport".  On our honeymoon to the Rocky Mountains, we enjoyed looking for wildlife as we walked the trails.  The wildlife you are most apt to see are birds.  We saw a few different birds that we knew we had never seen before but had no clue what they were.  Before heading to the Smoky Mountains a couple years later, we thought it would make walking the trails that much more meaningful if we knew what we were looking at so we started looking for books on birds.  Around this time, Bob was sharing an office with a person who has been an avid bird watcher for many years.  Ann is very good at bird watching and enthusiastic about taking friends out to find birds.  Ann has helped us find many of the 160+ birds on our list.  

Bird watching has really helped us to see much more of the world around us than we had ever really known about.  A couple of years ago, neither of us could have named more the 20 or so birds, let a lone had the satisfaction of seeing over 160+ different kinds, including over 120 in Iowa.  It has been an eye opening experience for us and we really enjoy it.  It is a great way to get outside and enjoy nature, get some exercise walking around and a chance to learn to appreciate the natural world around us a little more.

The categories of birds we are displaying here are used mostly out of convenience.  Photographing birds is kind of a tough thing to do, because generally they are kind of shy for the camera.  Without a really good zoom lens or the ability to digiscope, it is hard to get good pictures of many birds.  Most of the pictures here were taken with a Kodak DC4800 with 6X optical zoom.  That's not a lot of zoom, but we've managed to get some decent shots over time.