Welcome to my birding and photography website. My name is Jamie and will be your host throughout this site.

August 2011 update: Now living in Fort Collins, CO and attending Colorado State University. I currently changed my major to Conservation Biology with my minor still being in Applied Statistics. I am still planning on working with the rehabilitation of avian habitat int he future. I am ecstatic to report that I will be leading my first public bird walk in conjunction with the 7th annual Northern Colorado Birding Fair on September 24th, 2011 at Fossil Creek Regional Open Space in Fort Collins. Earth day this year marked the beginning of my 6th birding year, wow how time flies! My life list is currently up to 345 species including the additions of Snowy Plover, Lesser-prairie Chicken, Wilsons Phalarope, Brown Thrasher (all four were from my recent trip to Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge near OshKosh, Nebraska) and finally a Yellow-crowned Night-heron. I have added a few new videos to my youtube channel, birdingvids, as well as the video vault here at aves101.

Finally rounding out my update is the special addition of my tattoos symbolizing my passion and new-found life. The bottom is the silhouette of an Accipiter and the top is a Buteo.

For updated information or birding videos follow me on Twitter and YouTube:

December 2010 update: Not much to report from the Denver Colorado area. With my total life list count at a meager 328 species there is no doubt that this has been an especially hard year for me. I have had two consecutive ankle surgeries 11 months apart with the first one August 2009. In October I married and my last name changed from Mullin to Osterbuhr. My 5th birding year (April 22nd, 2010 through April 21st, 2011) has brought 27 new species to the list but it is not over yet! A few of my favorite highlights so far have been a Common Nighthawk, White-tailed Ptarmigan, Northern Waterthrush & Mississippi Kite. The big event this year will be a three-day trip to Florida in January. I plan to add a few of the more of the local species that I had missed from last year. Also coming in 2011 will be the beginning of a 3 year education to abtain a BS degree. Starting January I will be attending Colorado State University in Fort Collins. I plan to get a degree in Zoology with minors in both Applied Statistics and Conservation Biology. My goals for the future include working on conservation & rehabilitation to the vast expanse of wildlife (mostly avian) that were disrupted by the April 2009 BP Oil spill.

January 2010 update: After living in the Denver, CO area for a little over 1 year now I have come to realize that living in California was one of the best birding experiences of my life. Not much birding happens around here and it is very cold in the winter. I have only seen a ahndful of spcies at my back-yard feeders, but hey I do live right in the middle of Aurora! My Back-yard species seen include: Black-capped Chickadee (year round), American Goldfinch (winter '08), Lesser Goldfinch (witner '08), Hybrid Northern Flicker female and male (winter '08), Red-shafted Northern Flicker (year round), Starlings, Pigeons, Common and Great-tailed Grackles (witner '08), Sharp-shinned Hawk (winter '08 & '09), Crows (year round), American Robins (winter '08, summer '09), Bushtit (winter '09), House Finch (year round), Dark-eyed Junco (winter '08 & '09).

I am rounding out the end of my 4th birding year (on April 22nd) with a total of 300 species added to the "life list". Remember I do not add a species to my life list unless I have a reasonable photograph of it. Compared to previous years "life list" additions, the last two years have been meager. This tally includes my recent birding trip to Orlando, Florida at the beginning of December 2009.

Year 1 : CA - 145 species

Year 2: CA - 87 species

year 3: CA - 20 species, CO - 8, KS - 2

Year 4: CO - 11 species, KS - 3, FL - 24

2009/2010 website additons include: Trip Reports, Library, Gallery & Updates

2008: I live in the small town of Groveland, CA which is near Yosemite National Park. I am very new to the birding world and this is how my journey began. While attending the beautiful Columbia College in Sonora, CA I took a basic Biology class. I love animals of all sorts so Biology was a fun and exciting yet a challenging class for me. Towards the end of the semester (April 22nd, 2006) students of that particular class were required to go on a Saturday field trip. We could choose wildflowers or bird watching. I have had previous, though very little experience in this with my partners mother, Marie (Thanks Marie!) but did not particularly want to do either of these things. On a whim I choose to go on the bird watching field trip. Our Biology instructor Mr. Guy Van Cleave (you can read more about him below) was very knowledgeable about the birds we saw /heard that day and had made it very interesting for me in particular. After that day was over sometime in the night during my sleep a flip switched from the off to the on position in my body and ever since that day I have been fanatically invloved with birding. I watch, read and learn everything I can about birds, or the subject of Ornithology as it is properly called. I created a Yahoo group in May 2006 which is titled backyard birding. I would love to chat about birds so if you are interested toss me an e-mail (jamie@aves101.com).

Photography has always been a part of my life. I can remember taking sooo many pictures with film that I had to carry around my undeveloped rolls in a plastic bag because I could not afford to develop them at the rate I was taking them. By April 2001, I had about 35 rolls of film in my zip lock, Kas's parents, Ron and Marie (Thanks again!) had given me enough money to develop all my film!! I was caught up and decided not to let it get out of control. Digital was still to expensive for me so I kept on shooting with a really nice 35mm. I eventually got a digital camera and that changed everything as many of you well know. I keep taking photos of things that interested me, friends, family, animals, ect.

When I got into birding I had a 6 mega pixel 12 times optical zoom digital Konica Minolta, with which I got some great birding shots. I was told by several people that if I wanted to get serious about birding photography I needed the right equipment. Finally in April 2007, after a lot of reading and thinking I upgraded to the SLR world of digital photography. I went with the Nikon D80 body and the Nikon VR 70-300 Zoom lens. I have never been happier with the results I have got with this set up. By October, I had decided I wanted to know the birds even better than just by sight alone and got an audio recorder and a shotgun microphone. I had started to record their songs and calls to go with their profile photos when it occurred to me that the best way to combine these two challenging hobbies was to make a website and share all this valuable information with anyone who was interested. That is how aves101 got started. To see photos of my equipment click here: Jamie's Equipment

I graduated in May 2007 from Columbia College with an Associates of Arts Degree in General Studies and then again in December with an Associates of Science Degree in Biology. I have made some very valuable friends through out the years as well as some very dear birding friends. I want to give a special thanks to Guy Van Cleave for everything he has done for me. Guy has completely changed my outlook on life and has introduced me to the wonderful world of birding which, in turn has given me purpose and a new outlook in life. I will always treasure this gift from Guy.

My favorite Birding Links

My favorite things

My Facebook

My Yahoo Birding Group

My #2 Hobby - I also wrote a 500 page 4000+ photo book about all information pertaining to Cabbage Patch Kids from 1983-1988/89. Copies were first released in November 2005.

Exposphere Website & Flight 1549 Animation - My Husband's Job

Heli-chair website - My Husband's Hobby: Learn to fly a real Helicopter!

You tube videos