The other day I was down at my favorite bulk food store back in the livestock area. Standing there with a blank stare, I must have been motionless for awhile as my daughter finally says, “Daddy are you OK?”. I snap to and realize that my dismay at the price of bird seed has caused me to drift into another place. I grumble something about how it costs more to feed birds than it does to feed my own family, and we move on to another aisle. I could not justify the expense of the seed when I was making choices about what goodies I could afford to feed us!

For the past several years I have been highlighting the bird watchers (birders) who, through dedication and perseverance, are able to see more species than anyone else on the Kenai Peninsula and then take the time to enter those sightings in eBird. Ebird is a user-friendly web application in which people can keep track of birds they see anywhere in the world. Each year, the number of species seen edges higher than the previous year, establishing a new record. We are getting ever closer to one person seeing 200 different bird species on the Kenai Peninsula in one calendar year.