Given my earliest memory is watching Blue Planet back in either 2001 or 2002, the life of an adventuring amateur naturalist was perhaps a matter of inevitability for me!

An absolutely devout birder since 2005 (one of my very earliest memories being ID'ing a Grey Falcon, glancing between the spiralling bird and the field guide during the Kununurra burn-off influx of Raptors) with an especial love of waders (particularly the sharply attired, stoutly handsome Pectoral Sandpiper, and after five years of theorising and constant searching the first ever South Island Pied Oystercatcher verified in Tasmania!)...

A very serious mammal watcher since 2017 (beginning in earnest with the astonishing sight of a Shepherd's Beaked-Whales, a beast I'd read about in my childhood, on pelagic birding trips, and strengthening into an obsession during one of many family trips to Port Douglas, with Striped Possums, Herbert River Ringtails, and of course the fantastically burly and bizarre Lumholtz Tree Kangaroo, replete with its bell-pull tail, igniting the mammal-spark that'd always been brewing)...

A passionate frog hunter since 2020 (being particular inspired by a gaudily splotched Motorbike Frog in the dunes behind Cheynnes Beach, and the kaleidoscopic array of Froglet colour morphs in my back yard... this of course is not to disparage reptiles, which I have always found fascinating too, but they are so dissimilar to my beloved frogs as to make the "herpetology" umbrella one which scarcely impresses me)...

I have long sought an outlet to put my trophy cabinet of non-bird photos to as good a use as the bird photos are on eBird... hence, my long-pondered iNaturalist account! For my historical archives, my iNaturalist writings will be rather less passionate than those on eBird (where I have documented the circumstances behind all the photos you see here extensively in my trip reports) so as to keep the vast amount of retrospective uploads coming steadily.

Hopefully, in some small way, the results of my various musings and adventures may inspire even a fraction of the fascination and awe towards the natural world with which Audubon, Gould, Bennett and of course the great Sir David himself have inspired me... in their image, I seek to put the art into science, the science into art, and generally make sure that everyone has a blast enjoying the greatest art-gallery the world has ever seen; the natural world!

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