Looking back at 2025

Northern Harrier - Bosque del Apache NWR, NM - January 2025

As I entered 2025, I posted about my hope to combine cycling and bird photography while traveling throughout the US. As it turned out, I was able to follow through on my planned trips and even added a few extra. Given how much I love to travel, 2025 was a wonderful year for me. I took 10 trips, traveled for 128 days, and visited 19 states.

Hawaiian Goose - Hakalau Forest NWR, HI - February 2025

I seem to have inherited my wanderlust from my parents. Back in 2001, Dad retired and my parents moved to Massachusetts from Pennsylvania to be closer to family. I remember Mom telling me that she wanted to make sure that she had one great trip every year. “That means,” she said, “I am about 50 trips behind.” She ended up exceeding her goal. Up until the pandemic, it seemed that Mom and Dad were traveling about 4 months of every year. I believe they visited over 150 countries. They particularly enjoyed visiting old cities and ancient ruins. Compared to them, I am much more focused on being outdoors in nature.

White Ibis - Harris Neck NWR, GA - April, 2025

One of my goals this year was to photograph as many bird species as I could. In my Big Year post, I wrote that I hoped to photograph 400 species of birds. Privately, I was thinking that 450 was a reasonable possibility. In the back of my mind, I had the thought that if everything went incredibly well, there was even a very slim possibility I could get to 500 species. As it turns out, I have photographed 508 different species this year with another 13 species that I have seen or heard but was not able to photograph.

Great Egret - Port St. Joe, FL - April 2025

I am a goal oriented person and a numbers guy, so it is satisfying to reach 500 species for the year. However, the bigger picture for me is that I spent the year being outdoors in all sorts of amazing places, and that is why I was able to photographed all of these birds. I now know so many more species and have a much better understanding of each bird’s geographic range. When I entered this year, my US life list was 281 species, and I had seen 179 of them in Massachusetts. My US life list has grown to 545 with only 21 new additions to my MA list. I now can differentiate between species that I might only find in the Arizona mountains or in the Rio Grande Valley versus species that I can find throughout the country or in broader regions. Before this year, I had no idea that there were 25 parrot species actively breeding in the US. Now I have photographed 8 of them and know that most parrots species can be found in southern California, southern Texas or southern Florida.

Brown Pelican - Dauphin Island, AL - April 2025

My cycling trip from Savanah GA to New Orleans LA was fabulous. Back in 2015, I cycled solo from Bar Harbor ME to our home in Harvard MA. However, that 5-day, 400 mile ride was my only multi-day solo trip entering this year. By comparison, my GA to LA trip was 24 days long and covered 1115 miles. Also, this was my first trip explicitly focused on and planned specifically to combine bird photography and bicycling.

Short-eared Owl - Nome AK - May 2025

In the end of May and early June, I traveled to Alaska. This trip was split into a week of birding, primarily in Nome, and a one week cycling tour from Anchorage to Fairbanks to Valdez. If I had to choose my favorite cycling/birding trip of the year, I would choose the Alaska trip by a fraction over my LA to GA trip. The scenery was just so amazing. I was continuously overwhelmed by the vastness and the beauty of the landscape around me.

California Quail - San Diego County CA - August 2025

While the majority of my travel was by myself, some was with family and friends. In August, I traveled to San Diego CA with my daughter Becca as she moved there for 4 months of field research for her masters degree. In the early fall, Jesse, Ruth and I took a 9-day trip driving and cycling to North Carolina and back. Kate and I joined Trish, Doug, Jesse, Ruth, Mark and Leslie for our annual trip to the Finger Lake region of NY.

Peregrine Falcon - Cape May, NJ - October 2025

In early October, to end my cycling travels for the year, I did a short cycling and birding trip to Cape May NJ and Lewes Delaware. Another goal of mine is to bicycle in all 50 states. I started 2025 having cycled in 31 states since 2019. This year I added 10 new states: HI, AK, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, NJ, PA, and DE. With my total now at 41, I have the following 9 states remaining: AR, IN, ND, MN, IA, KS, NE, WY and NV.

Marbled Godwits & Long-billed Curlews - Salinas River NWR, CA - November 2025

In November, Kate and I had a wonderful 19 day trip to northern California highlighted by an inn-to-inn walk from Santa Cruz to Monterey along the beach. That trip was a delightful mix of visiting friends, the inn-to-inn walk, and exploring the coast north of San Francisco.

Crested Caracara - Estero Llano Grande SP, TX - December 2025

My final trip of the year was a December birding trip to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. In the beginning of the year, I wondered how focusing so much time on travel, cycling and bird photography would affect me. I posed the question, “Will this year feed and grow my passions or satisfy and diminish them?” I have found that it is the former not the latter. The more I have cycled, photographed, traveled, and spent time in nature, the more I realize that these activities nurture my soul. Given this, I hope to continue spending as much time as possible on these activities that I love.