I'm a post-doc research ecologist; my expertise is in arctic shorebirds, but I've studied birds for a long time in various settings in Norway, Svalbard, northern and southern California, the desert in CA and AZ, and most recently here in TN.

My current passion is to observe, record and learn about the organisms right outside my front door here in Shelby Forest of SW Tennessee -- a beautiful area of hardwoods, with an *amazing* variety of insects, amphibians, and birds. There is almost no research going on in this area (that I know of), and we should try to catalogue as many species as possible. All my observations (and those of others) go to the Shelby Forest Biodiversity Database: "BioBlitz of Shelby Forest." I hope this data will contribute to conservation of the forest here.

THANKS TO ALL THOSE HELPING ME WITH ID's! (it's for a good cause)