Bob OBrien

baro@pdx.edu

Carver OR USA

I have been interested in Natural History from a very early age, like so many others on BugGuide. My first interest as a preschooler in my back yard near the Cow Palace in South San Francisco was bugs. I recall having jars full of Daddy Longlegs. Fortunately they don't bite. I was fascinated by Bee Flies that I identified in the Little Golden Guide to Insets in the '50's. And I still am. Then I discovered Birds. Lots and lots of Birds. That continues to this day, 70 years later. I have 10's of thousands of Bird photos. Not Great bird phots, not good bird photos just bird photos. Some are OK though

Somehow during the Sputnik Era I got channeled into Chemistry from High School and was fortunate in this respect. Chemistry is fascinating and has so many manifestations. I love chemistry. This is the kind of stuff I worked on in my former, Physical/Atmospheric/Environmental Chemistry, life
RJOB Peer-reviewed Publications
[Actually, I still have a couple of toes in that life]

While hiking with a son and 2 granddaughters on the John Day River in desertous Eastern Oregon, birds were few. But my granddaughters were great at finding Bugs. And they still are. So I photographed bugs as well as birds. What to do with these bug photos? I discovered BugGuide on the Internet. What a great site.
So, since birds are few and so well observed during 50 years here at my place in Carver, Oregon (SE of Portland) but Bugs are abundant, diversity-wise at least, now I'm hooked on BugGuide; and will be cataloguing all the insects (ESPECIALLY POLLINATORS) hereabouts into the future. Using my bird camera. Canon EOS 7D Mark II AE, IS, AutoISO with 300mm lens. Often with 67mm extension tubes for the Bugs A great camera. Very reasonably priced, used, nowadays.
None of this would be possible, except for the great, mostly amateur, bug-identifiers that comprise such a great resource. BugGuide.

Some rights reserved. Licensed under a Creative Commons License.

All my photos are free to use. BUT please let me know where/when they appear. Please.

3259 images submitted by this contributor