My entire life I’ve been fascinated by observing wildlife. I spent much of my childhood camping in the mountains of the Pecos Wilderness in New Mexico. My father would tell me to be quiet and look for animals. That is where I saw my first deer, elk and bears. In the evening we would walk quietly through the darkness of the forest and listen for owls and coyotes. I would have been afraid alone but with my dad I never felt scared. One night I heard my first hoo-h’HOO-hoo-hoo of a Great Horned Owl.

Woodpeckers entered my world via the aspen trees that once grew in the front yard of my childhood home. I remember one once crashed into the window and died — I had never seen such beautiful feathers up close. The red was striking. I made my parents hold a funeral in the backyard for the poor creature. My dad made a tiny wooden cross to mark the grave, despite him not being a religious man.

I can remember the first time I saw an osprey catch a fish out of the Willamette River in Eugene when I was 17. I was riding my bike across the bridge to Autzen Stadium when it happened. I had to stop so I could marvel at the fish wriggling about in the raptor’s talons. The fish would not be getting away, and the osprey would be well fed.

In college, I took a class called “Sea Birds and Mammals of the Oregon Coast,” taught by Pat Boleyn. She was the best professor I have ever had. It was in this class that I conducted my undergraduate research project on cormorants. I focused my study on the Brandt’s and the pelagic and spent hours and hours that term counting birds with a clicker while looking through a spotting scope donning full rain gear at various locations along the Oregon coast. It was at this point in my life that I labeled myself a bird watcher, a birder.

I began to keep a “life list,” a term birders use for a list of every species I had seen so far in my life that I could possibly remember. To add a new name was a delight. I will never forget the day I saw a rhinoceros auklet for the first time floating around in an estuary near Newport. Or the day I looked up on the Alakai Swamp Trail in the mountains of Kaua’i and saw an ‘I’iwi in the branches of the lapalapa trees swaying above me.

I recently joined the Pendleton Bird Club and attending their monthly meetings has been both educational and invigorating. I get so excited after every meeting thinking about the species I have yet to see.

You don’t have to know anything about birds to start birding. Just observe the birds you see in your daily life. Take note of them, make observations about their behaviors and their appearance. Purchase a field guide or use an app like Merlin Bird ID to learn more about your local species. Take it a step further and join your local bird club or the National Audubon Society.

As birders say, keep looking up.