Everyone else seems to have their early memory, so here's mine. I was about
9 years old, growing up in the Russian River area of northern California. I
was exploring near a pile of lumber between a prune orchard and the creek,
which had some nice riparian vegetation. In an opening in the understory,
there was a robin-sized bird with a brown body and a long, curved bill.
That bill was so distinctively curved that when I got home I knew I could
identify it from a picture in a book at home. My Dad was a substitute mail
carrier on a route that included Naturegraph Publications. He would get
different publications of theirs as Christmas presents, and one included the
birds of Northern California. That was my first experience using a field
guide, although it didn't compare to the Peterson or Robbins guides that I
got in college. I knew a few birds like crow, quail and robin, but that
discovery of the California Thrasher got me started. I eventually started
learning the ducks (Audubon style) and game birds, a few birds of prey, and
a few others until I had a natural history course in college, where I had to
learn birds.

The second coming, and what got me started birding, was a trip to New Mexico
in 1976 for a wildlife conference and competition. We were scheduled to
meet up with our advisor, Stan Harris (who I since learned did his Masters
research on the birds of the Potholes area just north of here before it
became a reservoir), at the Desert Museum in Tucson. Little did the five of
us in our car realize that we were in one of the finest birding areas in the
entire U.S. That afternoon we headed up to Madera Canyon, and one of the
first birds I saw was a Painted Redstart, followed by Bridled Titmouse,
Arizona (Strickland's) Woodpecker, and a whole list of SE Arizona
specialties. I remember writing in my paper summarizing the trip to NM
about driving way up to Rustler Park from the South Fork of Cave Creek
Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains "just to see a Mexican Chickadee", which
is amusing now considering the trip I made this fall "just to see a Eurasian
Dotterel". I didn't have the same perspective on new birds then since every
new location that I visited was bound to expose me to something new. But
that was my first true birding experience.

Randy Hill
Othello
hill at cbnn.net