Welcome to my blog. I started this blog to share some of the experiences I have had while wandering the great outdoors, to spread knowledge of the natural world to anyone who might find it useful or entertaining, and to explain my own work both for others and to help me clarify my own thoughts.
To give some background on where I am coming from, let me tell you a little about myself. I have been a birder, and general student of nature, from a very young age. Going outside was always my favorite thing to do as a kid (still is for that matter), and I went on many walks lead by naturalists who were experts in a wide range of fields from mushrooms, to animal tracking, to wildflowers. My favorite, however, were always the birding walks. Birds are such incredible creatures. They are capable of the astounding feat of flight, they have evolved and perfected the feather (a unique structure in the animal kingdom today), and have a huge range of other adaptations that have allowed them to fill niches in every habitat on every continent. Academically, I have studied birds on my way to getting a BS in Environmental Science from the University of California, Berkeley and two MS (one in Avian Science and a second in Animal Behavior) both from the University of California, Davis. I am now working as a Senior Environmental Scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Board, a California state agency, where I manage the Stream Flow Enhancement Program working on stream restoration and water quality improvement across California.
Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you enjoy what you find here.
If you are interested in other ways to connect with me, here are a few options:
Become a follower of this blog!
View and subscribe to my YouTube channel – A Birding Naturalist
Follow me on Instagram – abirdingnaturalist
Good birding,
Aaron N. K. Haiman
abirdingnaturalist 
Hi Aaron. We live in Crestline up in the San Bernardino mountains in California. We just had a visit from a bird looking just like the Evening Grosbeak. We have a lot of Black-Headed Grosbeak but this one was different with it’s yellow head and large white patches on the wings on his back. If you want to see some pictures, let me know and I can email them to you.
Best regards,
Malin
Hi Malin,
I would love to see photos! If the bird comes back, I would also love to get a recording. Any recording device will work fine. Taking a movie on a cell phone has good enough sound to be very useful.
Thanks!
–Aaron
Hello Aaron. I live in the Berkeley Hills, and want to encourage an owl to live on our property to eat the moles or gophers that eat up our garden. Can you suggest what owl I should aim for and what kind owl nesting place to put up?
thanks
Eliyahu
Hi Eliyahu,
Barn Owls are terrific pest controllers, if you can get them to hang around. Putting up a Barn Owl box is the best bet. You can make your own (plans and instructions are pretty easy to find online) or buy one from a variety of sources including the Barn Owl Box Company. Another species that you can put up a box for would be Western Screech Owl. They are smaller and so will not eat as many rodents, but still really cool birds! If you decide to really go for it, put up a box for each!
Other than those two, Great Horned Owls are voracious predators but they do not nest in boxes and so are harder to attract to a specific spot. They will nest in the large tree that they like the look of, and creating that is harder than just putting up a box or two.
I should point out that even putting up a box in the perfect location with lots of food around will not insure that an owl will live in that box. They are finicky wild animals that cannot always be predicted.
Let me know what you end up going with and how it works out!
Good birding,
Aaron
Thank you!