I'm a retired National Weather Service meteorologist, but I've always been interested in nature (landscape photography, animals, plants, thunderstorms, etc). I was previously focused on venomous or predatory creatures, but after recently retiring and upgrading my photography equipment I got into...birds! It's addicting, and I need to back off some, especially when I don't know the species of bird I'm looking at. Anyway, I started showing my brother-in-law pics and asking him to identify, but with time he pressured me to join iNaturalist. I now live in central AZ, and have traveled most of the West in my lifetime. I probably lived in southern NM/far west TX longer than anywhere else (32 years), but AZ is my favorite state. I'm also a songwriter/singer but most of my songs are not about animals.