First of all I would like to give to you a brief introduction of myself since it’s the very first time I have the great opportunity to write a post here – by the way thanks Amie, Crist and Seth Inman for the invitation.

I am a 20 year old birder from Guatemala and I have been in touch with nature and birds since I was a little kid. I remember being carried by my dad on his back and going out to the field to go birding. He needed to take care of me but he didn’t want to just stay at home wasting valuable hawk migration time, so he took me with him no matter what. I remember I enjoyed it A LOT, not only because I liked being carried, but the memories of the field guide open in my dad’s hands and his binoculars hanging by his neck and his trying to point out the bird and later showing it to me in the book are things I will never forget. Of course I was too young to actually spot the bird and appreciate it in the field but I do remember looking at the birds carefully in the field guide. A few years later I was so excited when he gave to me my first pair of binoculars as a Christmas present! I felt like a pro ornithologist (although I didn’t know that word yet). That same year he bought his first spotting scope so when I wasn’t able to see the bird and observe it through my binoculars myself he would find it on the scope so I could enjoy the beauty, behavior, different plumages – everything of the birds. I immediately fell in love with birding and all of what biding had to offer to me. I started discovering a hidden world traveling around my country, walking for hours on trails in the rain forest or the cloud forest, the thorn forests and deserts of Guatemala looking for birds. All our vacation time we would organized as a birding expeditions. Spending time with my dad and my brother out there in the field was priceless.

I started using eBird and started birding formally in 2011 when I was 15. I was lucky to meet a great family of birders in Guatemala. The Cahill family showed me how to use eBird and how to get involved in the birding world of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They use eBird for their conservation efforts in Guatemala saving the cloud forests of Alta Verapaz with their NGO Community Cloud Forest Conservation (CCFC). John Cahill was the very first Young Birder I met in my birding life.  He told me about the Cornell Young Birder Network in 2011 and suggested I should apply to go, but I wasn’t ready for the challenge yet. But I worked hard on my birding skills to apply for the 2014 YBE and I got in! It was the best news I ever had in my life, I exploded with joy and happiness when I received the email from Jessie Beery that I was accepted!

After that great event I knew I had to do my part and create another extension of the Lab in Guatemala. I started eBirding even harder. The local birding community was growing but just a very few were using eBird, so my dad and I had the idea of doing a monthly workshop and a field trip around Guatemala. A few months later the National Association of birding tourism invited me to be part of their Board of Directors and I accepted. This year I launched my idea of the workshops and the field trips to the rest of directors and they thought it was a good idea. Since April 2016 every month we visit different areas and habitats around Guatemala, giving workshops about birds, birding and eBird, then going out to bird with the group the following day.

Currently I am studying environmental engineering at a local university in Guatemala City and working as a field guide for a Guatemalan birding company called Operador Latino, which focuses on Nature and Cultural travel. I was on a scouting trip for the Company in Belize when I met Crist and Amie at Belcampo Lodge. It was my eBird hat that introduced us (see below)!

I’ve been involved in several monitoring research programs with the  Cornell “Lab of O” and with the American Bird Conservancy, especially in the highlands but also in the lowlands. I am also currently doing ornithological research with a Guatemalan biologist ornithologist in the highlands of Guatemala City. The research is comparing the abundance of migrants and resident birds and their interactions in the area, as well as studying the impact of buildings on the bird population.

The photos at the top show some of the students during the last field trip I organized. Some of them are already good birders, but the goal is to get more people involved with birding so they can get the “birding bug” early, the same way it happened to me. The world really needs more naturalists no matter the age – it’s never too late to care about birds and their conservation.