Welcome to my birding and photography website. My name is Jamie and will be your host throughout this site. I live in the small town of Groveland, CA which is near Yosemite National Park. I am very new to the birding world and this is how my journey began. While attending the beautiful Columbia College in Sonora, CA I took a basic Biology class. I love animals of all sorts so Biology was a fun and exciting yet a challenging class for me. Towards the end of the semester (April 22nd, 2006) students of that particular class were required to go on a Saturday field trip. We could choose wildflowers or bird watching. I have had previous, though very little experience in this with my partners mother, Marie (Thanks Marie!) but did not particularly want to do either of these things. On a whim I choose to go on the bird watching field trip. Our Biology instructor Mr. Guy Van Cleave (you can read more about him below) was very knowledgeable about the birds we saw /heard that day and had made it very interesting for me in particular. After that day was over sometime in the night during my sleep a flip switched from the off to the on position in my body and ever since that day I have been fanatically invloved with birding. I watch, read and learn everything I can about birds, or the subject of Ornithology as it is properly called. I created a Yahoo group in May 2006 which is titled backyard birding. I would love to chat about birds so if you are interested toss me an e-mail (jamie@aves101.com).

Photography has always been a part of my life. I can remember taking sooo many pictures with film that I had to carry around my undeveloped rolls in a plastic bag because I could not afford to develop them at the rate I was taking them. By April 2001, I had about 35 rolls of film in my zip lock, Kas's parents, Ron and Marie (Thanks again!) had given me enough money to develop all my film!! I was caught up and decided not to let it get out of control. Digital was still to expensive for me so I kept on shooting with a really nice 35mm. I eventually got a digital camera and that changed everything as many of you well know. I keep taking photos of things that interested me, friends, family, animals, ect.

When I got into birding I had a 6 mega pixel 12 times optical zoom digital Konica Minolta, with which I got some great birding shots. I was told by several people that if I wanted to get serious about birding photography I needed the right equipment. Finally in April 2007, after a lot of reading and thinking I upgraded to the SLR world of digital photography. I went with the Nikon D80 body and the Nikon VR 70-300 Zoom lens. I have never been happier with the results I have got with this set up. By October, I had decided I wanted to know the birds even better than just by sight alone and got an audio recorder and a shotgun microphone. I had started to record their songs and calls to go with their profile photos when it occurred to me that the best way to combine these two challenging hobbies was to make a website and share all this valuable information with anyone who was interested. That is how aves101 got started. To see photos of my equipment click here: Jamie's Equipment

I graduated in May 2007 from Columbia College with an Associates of Arts Degree in General Studies and then again in December with an Associates of Science Degree in Biology. I have made some very valuable friends through out the years as well as some very dear birding friends. I want to give a special thanks to Guy Van Cleave for everything he has done for me. Guy has completely changed my outlook on life and has introduced me to the wonderful world of birding which, in turn has given me purpose and a new outlook in life. I will always treasure this gift from Guy.

Jamie's Personal Updates:

 

My favorite Birding Links

My favorite things

My Yahoo Profile

My Yahoo Birding Group

My #2 Hobby - I also wrote a 500 page 4000+ photo book about all information pertaining to Cabbage Patch Kids from 1983-1988/89. Copies were first released in November 2005.

My Fiances Hobby - Learn to fly a real Helicopter!

Our Jet boat

My Little Brother Robby