Nature Blog Network

Whenever I’m called upon to write an introduction for myself, I immediately experience a flashback to the Jon Lovitz “Get to Know Me!” sketches on Saturday Night Live (years of therapy haven’t helped to overcome this). In any case, I’m John, better known in Internet, as well as crop, circles as the Born Again Bird Watcher from my founding of the blog of the same name.

A life-long Oregonian, I grew up on the northern Oregon coast in a family with a deep history in commercial fishing. From the time I was eight years old, I was gill-netting for salmon with my dad on the lower Columbia River. Such an upbringing ensured that I was outdoors a good part of the time. From that I developed a deep and abiding love of and respect for nature. Had that fishery survived, I would likely still be there working my own boat (my father passed away in 2002) to this day, but dams, treaty disputes, stream silting, ranching of non-native salmon species, and a dozen other developments unhealthy to the life cycle of salmon have damaged it beyond viability. Fortunately, my father foresaw this and pushed me to go to college in order to learn the skills to survive in a world other than that in which I was raised.

Fast forward to the present; I now live in the small town of Scappoose, Oregon, a mere seventy miles from where I was raised, with my wife Polly, our daughter Elizabeth, my mother Rayona, and our faithful dog Bebe (ten pounds of teddy-bear-like ferocity). Occupationally I’ve taught high school English and spent a decade managing binocular, spotting scope, and nature observation market development for an international optics firm. Presently I own my own company, Born Again Bird Watcher LLC, through which I provide writing, reviewing, blogging, and marketing consultation work to nature-oriented publications, firms, and organizations.

So what’s my field cred (“street cred” translated for applicability to a natural history environment)? In addition to a life spent largely outdoors, I’ve been formally watching birds for about a decade (and informally watching them for three more). I “went bad,” as Robert Michael Pyle would say, and took up leering at Lepidoptera – especially moths – in 2004. Since then I’ve added nature photography and general natural history to my list of passions and psychopathologies as well.

What will I be doing here? Remember the kid in grade school who couldn’t wait to tell everyone about something that recently happened but that not many people knew yet? I was that kid. In essence, that’s what I’ll be doing here – bringing Nature Blog Network Blog readers all the nature news they can use (and quite likely some they can’t use but might be interested in learning anyway). I’ll also be working with Mike, Wren, and N8 on a host of other NBNB projects we have planned. So keep reading, subscribe to the feed, and rest assured that we’ll do our best to make each and every post worth your while.