Hello!

When I was seven, my family moved to an acre of horse property in a semi-rural part of Los Angeles. Our house bordered a 40-acre vacant lot, so there was plenty of space for wildlife to roam! Coyotes and bobcats would roam the field next door, herons would stalk gophers by their holes, and Barn Owls would scream their heads off at night. This planted the seed for my love of birds.

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My parents had a couple of old photo field guides, and as I started flipping through them, I was able to match the birds in the photos to the ones I was seeing in the backyard! House Finches, Dark-eyed Juncos, White-crowned Sparrows, Bewick's Wrens, Black Phoebes, and more! I started putting out feeders and a birdbath, and the birds started coming! I remember trying to watch the birds through the blinds and recording every time I saw a new species. As a family, we camped all over the Western United States (I earned over 50+ Junior Ranger badges from various national parks), and I always brought my field guide with me wherever we went, continually growing my life list as I myself grew up.

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When I reached college, I majored in Biology with an Ecology emphasis. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with that; I just knew I liked science and animals. One summer, I took an Ornithology course at the Au Sable Institute for Environmental Studies in Michigan. This vastly improved my ID skills, introduced me to new species, and further solidified my career path. I returned to Au Sable after I graduated for a summer of conducting songbird research, getting my first experience conducting point counts, and capturing and banding birds!

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After college, I worked for a year as an outdoor education teacher in the Redwoods of Santa Cruz, CA, introducing elementary students to birds, salamanders, banana slugs, and, of course, the Redwoods! At this point, I had decided I wanted to go into teaching at the college level, so I started applying for grad school. Eventually, I was accepted to Utah State University to study the nesting behavior of Black-backed and White-headed Woodpeckers in the Eastern Cascades of Washington. This was also when I started using eBird to keep track of my sightings, which really led me down the birding rabbit hole!

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After Utah, I moved back to Los Angeles to start a Ph.D. at UCLA studying the behavioral adaptations of urban Dark-eyed Juncos. But I had grown weary of grad school and decided to take a breather. I ended up teaching biology at different local institutions, primarily Oxnard College and Cal State Channel Islands.

 

I never ended up returning to grad school, but I became more and more involved in the local birding scene. I volunteered for the local Christmas Bird Counts, joined the board of Conejo Valley Audubon as the field trips coordinator (eventually becoming the vice president), and started going on international birding trips!

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After returning from a trip to Costa Rica, I decided to start guiding part-time with California Birding Guides while I still continued to teach. Eventually, I decided to switch to guiding/birding full-time, and thus "Birding with Sammy" was born!

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My goal with this business is to be an ambassador for the joy of birding and continually explore this amazing world of ours while working to preserve and protect its beauty, wildlife, and awe-inspiring locations. I would love it if you joined me in this goal, in whatever way you can! Can't wait to see you out there!

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- Sammy