Hi, there! Thank you for taking time out of your day to visit my blog. I’m excited to share my work with you.

My name is Ira, and I am a lifelong Wisconsinite. I have also had the opportunity to live in Missouri, Florida, and Pennsylvania, as well as short sojourns in Japan and South Korea. After years of training around the world, however, I returned home to Milwaukee for work in 2021.

When I’m not working, I’m birding. Or, at the very least, thinking about birding…

Like many people during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, I needed a way to decompress and escape the stressful and confusing landscape of modern society. Going to work every day was stressful, and memories of those dark days remain vivid. Birding afforded me that release. What should’ve been a leisurely hobby morphed into a lifestyle. (An “obsession” is more apt.) I suspect this metamorphosis was a re-emergence of my love for nature and animals when I was a kid. That affection for the natural world, though it never dissipated, was overshadowed by other pursuits in life.  Just like a cicada resurfacing after years living underground, I’ve returned to my childhood passions.

Not long after becoming an avid (overzealous?) birder, I created my IG account in early 2022 as a place to share my photos and random thoughts. After nearly 1.5 years of posting mostly bird photos, and the occasional book review, I’ve decided to create a new space to allow myself room to expand and develop my thoughts, chronicle my travels, and, yes, post more photos of both birds and other subjects.  As this is my first blog, there will certainly be hiccups, but I hope that you will enjoy the ups and downs this journey will take.

After all, the birds brought me here :)

Disclosure:  Unless otherwise stated, the copyright for all entries and media featured on this blog or on my IG account, @mke_birder, belongs solely to me. If you would like to use any of my content, please message me to obtain written consent. Remember, please be a kind and responsible digital neighbor.