Why?

(This rambling and wordy post was brought to you courtesy of the I and the Bird 1 year anniversary themed special)

Mike asked us to contribute posts on why we bird, blog and blog about birding.

So first a disclaimer: I'm not much of a birder. There I said it. I (rather pretentiously) prefer to think of myself as a naturalist rather than a birder (and if I'm really trying to be pretentious as a "wildlife photographer"). I'm fascinated by all aspects of the natural world and regular readers will know of my particular love of the underwater world. The only problem with that is that you don't see many of these in the middle of London:

So how does one get his fill of the wonders of the natural world when in the middle of London? Well, I look to the skies. There are any number of great parks and reserves within easy reach but they are all surrounded by concrete borders limitting what may show up by walking in, but to most birds this poses no problem. Whether it is sparrows, starlings and blue tits bustling in hedges and street trees or waders and ducks migrating up the Thames I know I can get my daily fix by keeping one eye on whats above me. Watching birds like this green finch are a great way to forget the strife of urban life and there's always the possibility of something more exciting. Last year I saw my forst London Peregrine falcon while on a bus through north London - it was cool. Birding gives you experiences like these every day wherever you go because as someone wiser than me once said "I don’t go birdwatching. I am birdwatching."

So having got that fix; why come back to the laptop and blog about it? Well since I discovered my first nature blog due to a chance result whilst googling, I've visited lots of blogs many of them written by you. I've learnt a lot about wildlife, found some neat places to go and some excellent book recommendations. One thing I've noticed is how different people respond to different posts and this intrigued me. I wanted to share my experiences with others just as I'd shared their experiences. Also I wanted to see how people would respond to different photos and its been fascinating.

Non-diving readers find things divers can get very excited about slighlty uninteresting but get very excited about things we regard as everyday. Readers outside Europe find our everyday garden birds as different and exotic as we find theirs and more interesting than our rarities. So blogging (or more accurately reading others' blogs and responses to my blog) has opened up my eyes to the wider natural world, broken my pre-conceptions and been a lot of fun. Thanks all.

Told you it would be wordy.