Why?

I have decided to start a blog. When I ask myself "why would you do something so silly and time consuming?" I struggle to find a good answer. Then I remember that I experience lots of cool things at work on a daily basis and I think there are people that might be interested in hearing about them. At the very least, I will improve my writing skills for that novel I keep dreaming about and it will give me reason to focus on the positive things that are happening in my professional life. So, off we go.

For those that don't know, I am the Director of Education for a non-profit organization called The Center for Birds of Prey located in Awendaw (just outside of Charleston), SC. Over the past 20 years, the Center has gone by several other names which are of little importance as they are the past. It has not always been an easy past. I am going to strive to make that the last mention of said "difficult past" in this blog. This blog is about the good. Birds are good.

Here at the Center, we work with birds, primarily raptors. The focus of the work is to utilize birds of prey as a foundation for the understanding of environmental issues through education, research and the treatment of injured birds in a medical setting. As you probably gathered by my title, the focus of my work is utilizing birds to teach. We have a collection of raptors that we utilize in a variety of educational settings (display, flying demonstrations, school visits) to help expose our "students" to the importance of, threats facing, and general "coolness" of birds. We also have a fantastic campus in the coastal plain of SC with a huge diversity of habitats and therefore a wide variety of wild birds of all shapes and sizes.

This blog will focus on the birds and the people we experience every day here at the Center. There will be some recurring characters. There will always be new faces. I need to get a camera so I can add images to help you see what we see. I'll see what I can do.

So, I am off to work. Outside my window, some "butter butts" (yellow rumped warblers Dendroica coronata) are flitting through the bushes dangerously close to the window pane. Careful fellas. The parking lot is filling with cars. The "Tourist in Your Own Town" program brings us hundreds of visitors a day throughout January. I am sure there will be some interesting dialog as well as the potential for many new friends for the Center. There is a stiff, cool breeze which will make for some great flights in the demonstration. I'll let you know how it goes-