Been looking at birds since I was a kid. Have been an officer in the loca Audubon Society Chapter and been on quite a few Christmas bird counts.

Some favorite moments and sights:

At the cottage in western Ontario - the sounds of competing loons on a quiet night - a flock of white pelicans wheeling and soaring in a bright blue sky - a pair of bald eagles rolling and going talon to talon - observing what seemed to be unending ines of double crested cormorants come over the treeetops and land in a bay where I was fishing, it was particularly erie because cormorants are essentially mute

elsewhere - watching a northern shrike chase a brown creeper around and around a tree trunk. The creeper was still ahead when I left the scene - seeing an american bittern pump out its very odd song - the puffins of Nova Scotia - the wave of migrant warblers every May .

Sure would love to see a great gray owl.

rich r