By Will Keller –
If anyone had told me five years ago that I would be partnering with one of the best ornithologists in the state of Michigan—someone I had admired from afar since my earliest days as a birder—on a weekly birding podcast, I wouldn’t have believed them. But here I am, telling you, my fellow ASK members, how this has come to pass.
I could start this podcast origin story with my first Caleb Putnam encounter, as a ten-year-old sitting with my mom in a room at The People’s Church in Kalamazoo learning from him about how to use a newfangled app called eBird during a class sponsored by ASK. Or I could fast forward to March of 2020 when, with COVID raging, I was sent home from college to live with my parents and, seeking a cure for cabin fever, chased a mega-rare Ruff in Kent County and met Caleb for the second time. But maybe I should start from my birding beginnings.
Thanks to ASK’s own Donna Keller and Melanie Perry, my mother and my grandmother, my love for birds developed as a young child and was nurtured by ASK legend Russ Schipper. The birds themselves have always come first, but my second love is Birding. This may sound redundant but I think there is a real distinction to be made. To love birds is to be endlessly enamored with these bizarre and quasi-magical descendents of dinosaurs, from their morphological diversity to their uber-impressive migratory habits. To love Birding, however, is to love time spent with friends, to develop a deeper relationship with a geographical region, and to, against all logic, engross oneself in a sort of life-long scavenger hunt. Birding is the most potent generator of meaning in my life. It informs my professional life as an environmental consultant, and it takes me all around the world in an endless pursuit to observe as many different species as I can. It was during COVID that this distinction became clear to me. With classes asynchronous, I could chase rare birds by day and study by night. That is how I came to be standing six feet (remember COVID safety protocols?) from Caleb Putnam, someone whose reputation I by now knew and appreciated, and who had originally found this amazing bird in a Kent County corn field. And it’s how I began to appreciate Birding as distinct from the birds I had always loved. Caleb generously shared his knowledge of the Ruff that day and on many more days to come. It seems that I wasn’t the only birder chasing birds during the pandemic. I began to recognize faces and learn the names of other chasers, all part of this new Birding community to which I came to belong. Chasing a Painted Bunting in Berrien County, a King Eider in Grand Haven, and a Glossy Ibis near Hastings, I met other experts like Rick Brigham and Chace Scholten.
The pandemic waned, and life began to return to normal, but these new Birding friendships remained. Caleb, Rick, Chace, and I spent countless hours tallying migrating birds along the Lake Michigan shore. We took spontaneous trips to Whitefish Point, explored the Allegan State Game Area, and even took a trip to the Colombian Andes together. Traditions like scoping out the first Short-eared Owl at the Todd Farm each November or gulling at the Muskegon Wastewater Treatment Plant in February became as relevant to my life as pool days in July and Christmas Carols in December. Caleb and I often found ourselves calling each other to ask about a quick ID tip but ended up talking about birds for hours. We would joke that we ought to just record these calls and publish them as podcasts! In 2024, my partner, Rebecca, and I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I found myself calling my Birding friends back home more and more often to stay in the birding loop. In March of this year, Caleb and I called each other’s bluff and began recording a weekly, 30-minute show: The Real Birding Podcast. Our concept: to blend our own personal ramblings about our favorite hobby with the deep dives and breakdowns that we wish we had access to when we were beginners. Bird conservation, vagrancy, migration, and identification conundrums are only a few of the topics we have covered thus far. Caleb and I want to share our love for birds and Birding (remember the difference!) with anyone who wants to listen, so we try to make our show accessible to all ranges of bird lovers with topics that can appeal to beginners and experts alike. I hope that anyone reading this will tune in to our next episode (available on YouTube and Spotify by searching “The Real Birding Podcast”) and check out this project. Caleb and I are both incredibly grateful to our listeners with whom we celebrate the joy of birds and Birding as the show continues to grow and evolve, much like my own passion for this magical hobby. That a pandemic and a Ruff are part of the origin story just makes it that much sweeter.
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