Why I love travelling with my mother.
So I took my mom with me to Ocean City this weekend. She’s the primary source of my amateur-naturalist tendencies, the sort of mom who, when you come in yelling that you saw a weird bug, asks you do describe it and finds it in the “Field Guide to Insects” for you. She’s also a better spotter than me, even with bifocals:
Just after crossing the bridge over the Chesapeake: “Oh… are those the peregrine falcons you were talking about?”
Along route 50: “wait, what is that… a badger?”
And my favorite, while enjoying the view from the hotel bar: “Bunny! Bunny!” Followed by maybe twenty minutes of the two of us raptly watching a cottontail rabbit scurry around in the sea grass.
This is how you get to be a Wildlife Blogger, people: you learn from the best.