I actually didn't get started birding until May 1988 after retiring from
Boeing in 1987.

My brother-in-law, Paul Steel, was my mentor. He was an expert birder as he
had worked at it all his life. His entire career was with the US Fish and
Willife Service. He was the biologist at a couple of Nat'l Wildlife Refuges
(NWR) before becoming the first manager of the newly formed Columbia Basin
NWR, based in Othello,WA in the mid 50's. He went on to manage other NWRs
before being transferred to office job in Boston. This he didn't care for and
took the first opportunity to get back west which was to join the regional NWR
office in Albuquerque. He stayed there until he retired in mid 80's.

In May 1988 he and my sister, Bev, came out to visit us. Paul wanted to bird
in WA again and visit the Columbia Basin NWR and friends there. As I was
retired I had the time to go with him. I found out he was a very meticulous
record keeper. He was a very early riser, before light he would get up and
have his coffee and go out birding at first light. Since I like to get up
early also this was no problem for me. He had a little notebook where he
noted each species and the no. seen. He got me started keeping records also.
Since both of us were retired, I had the opportunity to go birding with him on
a number of trips to good areas. I learned something from him everytime out
and most of my birding knowledge was thru him. He was one of those people
that almost never left the house without his binoculars around his neck. He
said he never had totaled up the no. of species he had seen. All his records
were in the notebooks he kept and he never made a master list. The best I
could determine was that his list was probably somewhere in the mid 600's. I
miss being able to go birding with anymore as he had a lot of more places he
wanted to take me birding.

There is one story I like to tell about how dedicated he was to birding. I
have two sisters (twins) that live in SF Bay area. They and other family
members had planned a trip Hawaiian Is. in Mar., 1994 which included Paul and
my sister, her name is also Bev. My wife, Bev, and I had agreed to stay at
the house in San Mateo and take care of our mother and dog sit. We would also
check up on house in Sunnyvale. When Paul found out we would be house sitting
in San Mateo, he said he would rather go and take care of the house and dog in
Sunnyvale than go to Hawaii with his wife. The reason was he would have
someone, me, to go birding with every day whereas he wouldn't have someone to
go birding with in Hawaii. We did have a great two weeks where we went
birding every morning to a different area in the SF Bay area. There a lot of
good areas to bird down there.

Hugh Jennings
Bellevue, WA
hughbirder at aol.com