First Post!

Ah, my first blog post. I had so many great posts that I could've done if I'd started doing this earlier, but, alas, I didn't. So I figured that instead of putting off making a blog forever, that I'd just start one, and see how it goes. I joked around with names, trying to find trends in other people's blogs, and came up with this alliteration: "Ethan's Ecological Excursions", but I figured most wouldn't get the joke and would think I just picked a bad name. So I came up with Ontario Urban Naturalist. Not particularly exciting, but you know what, it fits. So here it goes:
          Welcome to my blog! I'm a birder from Kitchener, Ontario and I started birding when I was about 10 years old (I'm 14 now, soon to be 15). My mom owned/worked for an environmental consulting company, so naturally (ha, get the joke) she, and pretty much all of her colleagues were birders. Every year we went to Pelee Island for spring migration, and I tagged along but was more interested in herps at the time. I think on the first trip, everyone was watching a brilliantly plumaged male Scarlet Tanager, hopping around in the bushes in plain view just a few meters away from us. Everyone oohed and ahed, while I struggled to see the bird. No one understood why I couldn't see it, and it frustrated me at the time. So a year later, also on the Island, we were slowly driving down McCormick road, looking for Prothonotaries. All of a sudden my mom slammed on the brakes as a golden blur whizzed in front of the car. I quickly sat up in my seat, looked out my window and to my amazement, came face to face, with the brightest golden and blue bird I have ever seen. I was made a hardcore birder on the spot. The Prothonotary sat there for no more than 3 seconds before flitting off. We jumped out of the car and yelled down the road "we saw it! we saw it!" The next thing we saw was almost equally amazing as what we had just witnessed. Old people, running. And lots of them. They were almost instantly at our side, and searching the area in an almost military fashion. but after almost half an hour of searching, we gave up and left.
          Shortly after I'd seen the Prothonotary, I realized that there was way more birds out there, and a lot more rarer. I discovered eBird, Flickr, ONTBirds, OFO, KWFN and much more. I learned about twitching and chasing, mega's and vagrants, listing and patches. I learned that the reason I couldn't pick out the Tanager was because I had deuteranomaly, a form of colourblindness. I purchased binoculars, a scope, a tripod, camera lenses and many guides. I traveled to Puerto Rico, all over Canada, and a bunch of places in the US. And that basically brought me to where I am today.
Here's a Tufted Duck to end off: