I am a retired teacher. I taught high school physics and for the last 16 years was a high school principal. In my first 10 years of retirement I taught part-time at the University of Puget Sound and ran a small non-profit school reform shop called Coalition of Essential Schools Northwest. At UPS I taught teachers how to be principals and at CES Northwest I helped schools implement the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools, a national school reform program. Now I am really retired and pursuing my other interests full time. I have always been interested in natural history, the identification of living things. My formal science training is in Physics. I have very little formal education in nature but I have always enjoyed nature and living outside and being interested in what I see there. I like water and beaches and over the years have learned about most of the creatures found there. My interest in birds started by watching herons and ducks at my family cabin on Whidbey Island. That led to learning to identify other kinds of birds. I now know most of the local birds. When I moved to Gig Harbor I began keeping a log of the ducks and birds I saw coming and going. This blog is primarily to publish the data collected in those logs.