Ornithobotanica

Wow, you’re here! I’m so happy to have you visiting my little page, feel free to have a look around, put your feet up, enjoy the complementary cookies.

I suppose I should explain who I am and why exactly I’ve built this page and published it for the wider world.

Hi! My name is Anna Belle, I’m a biologist! Or, usually I am, but I’m a bit between jobs at the moment. Recent changes to the administration (ahem) may or may not have taken the job I was meant to be doing this year, and placed it indefinitely in the “do not fund” category. And, well, I was meant to be removing wildlife from JFK airport to help prevent the airplanes from running into pesky things like birds or raccoons or large groups of deer, pretty much anything of the creature variety. It is my understanding no one is doing that job this year, so if any of you are flying through any time soon, keep an eye out for stray seagulls.

But, such is the life of a seasonal technician. I’ve had a bunch of jobs, actually. I worked in Yosemite National Park, I was a bird banding assistant in Ecuador, I even spent three months in China studying nesting behavior in two species of small passerine birds (no, I did not speak any Chinese). Those are all stories for another time, suffice to say, as a biotech, I move around a lot, and there’s frequently gaps in employment. I fill those gaps lots of ways. I ran a native plant consulting business for a brief stint, and I still freelance as a screenwriter from time to time. I have a novel I’m slowly picking away at (don’t we all), and I have a (very) part time position as a consulting biologist for a telecom company. This last job is the relevant bit, because it takes up very little of my time and it required me to buy a new camera, one with real lenses and a camera bag and everything.

The camera in question. I wanted a Canon EOS 77D, turns out importing a used one from Japan (where they are called a 9000D I have no idea why) is shockingly more affordable. Honestly, It’s in pretty good shape, aside from the blurry viewfinder. But maybe that’s just past experience talking. Don’t even ask what my old camera setup was like.

And this new (read as: used off eBay) camera takes some stellar pictures, so now I have this folder on my computer full up with tons of cool, fun pictures of birds and all sorts of critters I find around here. Honestly, I could spend hours just trying to get good pictures of all the birds that come to my feeder alone, much less the ones I can see from outside my living room. And, I love Instagram, don’t get me wrong, but I think all of my various friends and family would be very annoyed if I started offloading hundreds of bird photos and field stories onto there every few days.

This leads us here, to this blog! The perfect landing site (haha) for my various critter photos, and my copious musings on birds, plants, field work, the climate crisis, you know, casual topics, and anything else that strikes my fancy. I don’t expect these posts to be too terribly in depth, unless the inspiration bug really gets to me, but I do expect them to pull from both my personal and professional life (provided I manage to find new full-time employment).

If casual, low stakes explorations of ornithology, botany, and the life of a field technician sounds fun to you, hop aboard! If not, well, I’m flattered you read this far, happy sailing! Be sure to check out my gallery on your way out, it will be updated as I go with any and all cool pictures I take.

Anyway, thanks for reading. See you soon!