In 2010, I was among just a few bird enthusiasts in Ukraine. I didn't even know the name of the hobby I became obsessed with. One day, while I was fishing, I took a picture of a bird sitting on a tree, and I became curious: what is its name? I learned that it was a Red-backed Shrike, my first lifer! Some time later, my friend noticed that I spent more time birdwatching than fishing, and that's when I first heard this word.

I started searching the Internet and discovered that millions of people around the world were involved in this activity, and they were involved really deeply. However, in Ukraine, this hobby was almost unknown, and there was only one website about birdwatching - the private blog of Vitalii Khustochka https://birdwatch.org.ua/. It's still active, by the way, and I highly recommend it!

After two years, I realized that I needed my own website too, with two simple and practical purposes:

1. To keep the records of my birding (I didn't know about eBird yet);

2. To share pictures and stories with my friends and family members (to be honest, my wife encouraged me to do that, and she keeps on doing it, thank you so much!).

So I did all that, and was pretty happy with the results, but I couldn't stop asking myself - why were there so few people in Ukraine interested in birdwatching, one of the most popular hobbies in the world? So, I decided to use my website to try to involve more people in this crazy but exciting activity.

This idea appeared to be the third and most important purpose of my project. Or you can call it a mission! Sort of: "To entertain, to educate, to involve, and to inspire"—sounds very important, right?

In 2016, my family and I moved to Canada to chase some North American birds and to get closer to another bird paradise - South America.

Since then, the mission of my website has remained mostly unchanged, and now, after 12 years, you might be curious: How is it going?

Well, it definitely made a difference for hundreds of thousands of bots, who came to this site selling all kinds of shit. No doubt they are all fell in love with my birds. And nobody knows where they are now and with whom they share their passion.

So, I encourage you to join the crazy bots and fall in love with birds, too. Read more than 200 articles about birding in Canada, the US, Ukraine, and other countries. Enjoy the pictures of hundreds of birds and the Nature around them.

Because nature is one of the things in our life which has a real importance, therefore it deserves our attention and care.

Put on your shoes and hat, grab your binoculars, and go birding!

Birding is life!