Daily Birding 📷 145 - (Special Edition) - My Journey Here

(from left) female Broad-tailed, two male Broad-tailed Hummingbirds (Click for larger image)

For those who do not know me let me introduce myself.

I am a bird enthusiast and amateur photographer. I challenged myself to post a bird photo every day in 2018! I include bite-sized information with my photos to create awareness about these beautiful creatures. I am still seeking my calling in making a difference for fellow steemians. For now, I enjoy sponsoring genuine content creators for SteemBasicIncome shares so drop by periodically for a few contests and drawings.
@josephsavage is my husband and the creator and manager of @steembasicincome and @thedailysneak. We are expecting the first addition to our nest early June. :)

145 days down! 220 to go!

Posting daily has challenged me. (I think growing a person has had a lot to do with that, my energy is pretty sapped.) But I think I have gotten out and gone birding more often than I would have been motivated to without, which was part of the reason for the goal.

@josephsavage & Me

Photo taken by @kass-and-bax March 2018

My posts are short and I put much of my energy and passion into them.

Here is my process:

• Go out and photograph. I'm still learning my new camera and will be for a long while. I used to photograph through my binoculars. Sometimes I still do. I explain that process here.

• Get home and go through photographs, choosing only the best quality or most interesting moments from each batch. When I go out I take many photos, and (if I judge them to be worthy) I will have a collection to use in the coming days. This is also how I plan to keep posting when we have our new baby, by prepping photos and posts in advance.

• Edit the photos, improving the image and bringing out the heart of the moment. I do my best to stay true to the moment and increase the storytelling capacity of each photo. I use Polarr to edit photos in case you are interested. I bought it before they changed to subscription so it was a one time fee. I like it very much. Full disclosure I have not used many other programs but this one fits my needs very well.

• I then choose a photo for the day. This is purely based on inspiration and what I feel I would like to share that day.

• I set the steemitworldmap link in my post to show where I took the photo. You can see my post here: What Is SteemitWorldmap & How You Can Use It

• I look up information about the bird using many sources (listed below) to learn more and verify what I know to be sure what I am delivering is accurate.

• For a while now I've been using grammarly.com plugin to check my text to make sure it is clear and clean. This is a free resource I highly recommend, thank you @kass-and-bax for suggesting it!

• Depending on how I am feeling I will read and research more about birds/bird biology to improve my overall knowledge and hopefully use it in future posts. :)

Confident this is a female Broad-tailed Hummingbird, females are very hard to distinguish between species (Click for larger image) Look at the tiny little feet!

There are several motivating factors to keep me posting a photo every day:

I care about birds.

I want to share my love for them with the world. Not only are they beautiful, they do important work including pollination, seed dispersal, carcass removal, insect control, and rodent control. They are funny (sometimes funny looking), there is such a variety of them, and they are almost everywhere which means ANYONE can be a birdwatcher.

Time flies.

It passes whether we work towards goals or not. It is something we cannot stop. I used to work a job I hated, but I came to realize how much of a sure thing time was. I could hunker down and the end would come. I still did not like my job, but it was an important lesson that helped form my present view of time management and goal setting.
I want to look back on this year, of all the days that have passed and have some sort of accounting for them. I want to say, even if I end up missing a day, that I accomplished something tangible the last year because I didn't give up.

Community.

I originally wanted to start sharing my 'work' with people, but I have never been very interested in social media and felt disconnected to the whole thing. I also wanted somewhere new, away from people I knew to test the waters with my venture. My husband @josephsavage had found Steemit towards the end of last year and mentioned it might be a good alternative to start out. So I signed up, and January 1, 2018, I started with my first bird photograph.

I just posted a photo. That's all I wanted to do. Get on, slap a photo, and call it good.
As I started looking around I found that there is a serious plagiarism problem that makes many users wary of giving their interest and support to photography posts. I started to feel more invested. I wanted to show that I was the person behind the photographs and each one had a story.

(from left to bottom right) male Black-chinned, female Broad-tailed, two male Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, and a female Black-chinned below (Click for larger image)

So I included more information.
What tools I use to take the photo, information about the species, how and where I found it. Some posts I make a little more educational and some I delve into the story of that day or personal experience. I do keep it short. I realize the majority of my audience are hobbyists or have never been birders. I want you as the reader to feel entertained and informed and not be overwhelmed.


I did not expect to love the people here. To be able to connect so internationally has been such a great experience for me.
I love seeking out new, genuine, unique people and seeing what their energies have created here.
I have been blessed to meet many steemians in person at the Steem Creator's Conference in April. (Shout out to @steemcafe and those who made that possible!) My husband and I plan on attending the next one in Toronto, September 6-9th with our new little one. :)
I love when you share birding stories and photographs with me.

I love connecting.

I hope to inspire you to look around for just a second longer. To hear a call and take a moment to be curious. To have more wonder in your life. Maybe it turns out that a flutter of movement is a lizard scrambling across a rock, and you find a love for it because of that extra consideration you gave to be curious and open. Maybe it will be an insect, or the cloud patterns, plant life, or geology. Perhaps those moments of presence will create an opportunity for human connection as well.

(from left to right) female Broad-tailed, unknown in back, two male Broad-tailed, male Black-chinned Hummingbird (Click for larger image)

My main birding sources for post creation:

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (6th ed)
ebird range maps
All About Birds
Cornell's Birds of North America Online Comprehensive Species Research
Macaulay Free Sound Library

My SteemitWorldmap Locations

@originalworks