Joined: Jul 31, 2022 Last Active: Oct 9, 2024 iNaturalist
I'm an amateur Monterey County naturalist, but my primary expertise is in birds. My books "Monterey Birds" [1st ed., 1985, 2d ed 2002] and the Breeding Bird Atlas of Monterey County [as lead editor, 1993] are authoritative for this county. I remain an eBird editor for Monterey County (and multiple other countries), and all my bird data are available at any time in eBird. I've traveled the world since the 1970s in search of wildlife, but primarily to see and photograph birds. My wife Rita and I still try to get in at least one foreign trip a year. So with more than 6000 species of birds on more than 10,000 checklists in eBird, I'm not going to use iNaturalist for birds ;-]
I also gained a bit of expertise in Odonata in 2006-2007, and have an on-line project with the current authoritative illustrated checklist of Dragonflies and Damselflies for Monterey County, all peer-reviewed via Odonata Central.
However, I have begun to enter reptile & amphibian photos from 50 years of enjoying the wilds of Monterey County, in particular, but also from hardcore birding in California and extensive global travel. Some of these have been on my web pages for years, but it seems better to archive them here. If all goes well, I may do the same for mammals, as time permits. I've already learned new stuff and new taxonomy by just uploading a few snake photos here, and it is really fun to learn new things about the natural world.