Written by Catherine Carroll

Cathy Carroll is a native Michigander, the Great Lakes state in the U.S., but became a birder in the Baltimore, Maryland, and Maryland’s Eastern Shore areas (the mid-Atlantic region) in the late 90’s. She was enticed by a birding friend to travel back to Michigan to see the Kirtland’s Warbler for her friend’s life list. She found the whole experience completely riveting and was hooked. Since that first experience, Cathy has seen Kirtland’s Warbler many times, each encounter as delightful as the first.. In 2006, Cathy took the opportunity to take her first birding trip abroad – to Cuba – and she has traveled widely since then. On her recent trip to Finland and Norway, she learned that she was the least well-traveled, by far, birder on the trip. That was a humbling awareness. Her style of birding now is to select a few special birds each year and try to see them. This fuels her ongoing interest in birds and the unrelenting issues that threaten them.