The Formative Years.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by birds and fossils. When I was a toddler my grandfather used to wake me up at the crack of dawn to go bird watching with him; we would sit for hours and stare out of his picture window at the bird feeders he built by hand and observe all the different kinds of birds that would visit his yard. We would see all kinds of avian friends; hummingbirds, corvids, songbirds, my mom even saw a cardinal once. You name it we probably saw it. My grandparents also had a pond in their back yard; thanks to that we saw many aquatic species over the years here in Manitoba. Ducks, loons, cormorants, herons. No matter what bird it was, my grandfather could always identify it. Even though he has been gone for quite some time, he instilled a love of nature in me that still exists to this day. I will spend the rest of my life birdwatching.

When I wasn't visiting my grandparents, I was back home in south-western Manitoba. I grew up in the Souris Valley, a well-known hotspot for Ordovician and Cretaceous era fossils. I was fortunate enough to live on a rural property with oak forests and a small creek bed that wound its way through the trees. Here I would find an abundance of pelecypods (bi-valve creatures, like modern day oysters and clams) and things that looked like giant snail shells. I would pull up fossilized snail shells out of the silty creek bed the size of my fist! Occasionally I would find the odd mineralized bison tooth as well. Unfortunately for adventurous 11 year old me, life had other plans for our family and we ended up moving to another area of the province. Regardless of where I may have laid my roots as an adult, I will always look back on those times fondly.

When I was in 7th grade I read a book about fossils and found out that reptilian dinosaurs were actually related to modern day birds, the missing link between the two being Archeopteryx- a fossilized dinosaur first found in Germany that looked like a lizard with wings and feathers. It was at this moment when my two interests combined into one- all thanks to Archeopteryx, the prehistoric bird dinosaur.