Photo by Dan Poleschook and Ginger Gum

About

Besides loons, I have a lot of passions, such as playing guitar (& dulcimer), birding, hiking, tennis, coaching, natural history, reciting poetry, reading non-fiction, and sharing nature with people of all ages.

I have been associated with colleges and universities as a professor (for 18 years) and as a student (for 11 years). As a professor, I have taught courses in Anatomy and Physiology, Animal Behavior, Animal Physiology, Biology, Botany, Ecology, and Ornithology. As a researcher, understanding the breeding and non-breeding ecology of the Common Loon has been a life-long interest of mine. I have studied breeding loons in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Saskatchewan and Maine and non-breeding loons in California, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Maine. I spent 7 years monitoring the health of a population of loons off the Louisiana coast in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Besides loons, I spent six years studying the winter ecology of the Northern Shrike, also known as the ‘butcher bird’ for its habit of impaling their prey on barbed wire and thorns. I taught at non-traditional schools (no walls) for seven years. For five years I worked as a naturalist at Yosemite Institute (renamed later to Nature Bridge) where I took groups of children (from 4th graders to seniors in high school) on daily nature hikes in Yosemite National Park. While there I developed and wrote a field guide to Trees of the Sierra Nevada entitled, “The Sierra Nevada Tree Identifier.” Also, I worked for two years as a field instructor for Sierra Institute (affiliated with University of California extension) teaching field-long semester courses on The Mountains of California and The Natural History of the Tropics.

I think Thoreau was right about a good many things as it pertains to how to live one’s life. For example, one should get the most out of each day, to suck the marrow out of life (carpe diem). In other words, the greater tragedy in life is not what we suffer, but what we miss, right? Hike that mountain peak, paddle that river, and set your alarm for 3am to watch the Perseid meteor shower.

As a naturalist-geek I have travelled throughout the USA with the intent of observing new fauna and flora. I have identified > 600 bird species, >600 plant species, >100 mammal species and >100 butterfly species, >75 mushroom species and >40 dragonfly species. My favorite nature and science writers are Jennifer Ackerman, David Quammen, Scott Weidensaul, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Stephen Jay Gould. I start my day between 4:00-5:00am. My favorite poet is Mary Oliver and one of my favorite poems is The Silence by Wendell Berry (below).

The Silence

Though the air is full of singing, my head is loud with the labor of words

Though the season is rich with fruit, my tongue hungers for the sweet of speech

Though the beech is golden I cannot stand beside it mute, but must say

“It is golden,” while the leaves stir and fall with a sound that is not a name

It is in the silence that my hope is, and my aim, A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing sounds men’s silence like a root. Let me say

And not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.