I am a retired speech and hearing scientist with a passionate lifelong interest in natural history, ecology, evolution and animal behavior. I grew up on a farm in southern Ontario. I took up birding and nature photography as a hobby as a graduate student at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. I worked in Nottingham, England as a postdoctoral researcher for three years. I moved to Texas in 1990 and served as a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas until my retirement in 2024. During the summer of 2016 I was bitten by a mosquito and infected with West Nile virus, overlaid with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barre Syndrome. A long recovery and difficulty walking led me to begin documenting wildlife more closely in my suburban back yard in Plano. I started using iNaturalist to share observations in the summer of 2019 and continue to find it to be a great source of knowledge and enjoyment.

My sincere thanks to the many expert identifiers who make iNaturalist such a useful resource, and to the iNaturalist community and software developers who continue to improve it.