birds,in your field.

Most birders keep a life list. I keep a life list and a hard drive of trail-cam footage I'll never sort through.

I saw my first kestrel from a bus window in high school — a small falcon hovering over a highway median, wings a blur, hunting the grass strip like it was a savanna. I missed my stop. I've been missing stops ever since.

What I learned that day: you don't need to travel for rare birds. The kestrel was in a median, between a gas station and a billboard. The rare bird was the one I finally looked up for.

So here's the invitation: look up. Log what you see. And if your trail cam caught something at 3 a.m. while you were asleep, post it — someone out there has been waiting to see exactly that.