I am a Caucasian male, 6'4", living in southeastern Arkansas. I'll be 50 in three months. I first got interested in birds as a child, growing up out in the country, but didn't become avidly interested until I was in my mid-30s, whereupon I went back to school to finish my undergraduate biology degree.

Something surprising about birds? How about this: many birds have the ability to regenerate nervous tissue, and so rearrange parts of their brains each year in conjunction with hiding food.

My interests: birds, bats, baseball, beer, and babes. I'm also passionately interested in evolutionary theory.

I was most afraid on a research trip which required me to climb a mountain in Mexico in search of bats. The last part of the climb required technical climbing, and I'm no athlete, let alone a climber. We were unprepared for the climb--we lacked climbing equipment besides a bit of rope. The ascent also required movement along the side of a mountain where we had to select which cactus to use as a handhold--which one looked least likely to give way under stress--and several dangerous scrambles over loose talus slopes. It took us much longer to get to the cave at the top of the mountain than we thought, so we were forced to spend the night in the freezing-cold cave without food or water, without warm clothes, and without so much as a sprig of grass with which to build a fire. So we sat shivering all night, worrying about the descent the next day. I was sure that my wife would have to travel to Mexico to retrieve my corpse. And of course, there were no bats in the cave. What would I do differently? I'm not sure I would change a thing. When we finally made it back to the truck the next evening, I was battered, bruised, starving and thirsty, covered with cactus spines, my feet were blistered and my toenails split. But I had never felt so brilliantly alive.