Jonathan Rust

I have almost always had a fascination with birds. It all began one Christmas when my grandmother gave me an Audubon bird stuffed animal. It was a small, round, slightly realistic rendition of a bird that I was very familiar with. It had noise box inside of it that makes a kind of cawing sound when it was squeezed. This Audubon bird was black and white with a red head and long beak, the red-headed woodpecker. I was familiar with it because one lived in my backyard inside of a large, dead tree. This little stuffed bird launched many hours of study, a lifelong collection, and reading of countless books. Over the years my collection of Audubon birds grew into hundreds of stuffed, tweeting, cawing, and chirping birds. The second of which was a black-capped chickadee. After acquiring a new bird, I would devote all my time to learning everything I could about it. I knew the locations of habitats, migration habits, what kind of food it eats, male and female coloration differences, and thanks to the noise box inside of the birds, I could identify them all by the sound of their calls. Eventually I had collected all that one could buy in the southeast. The rate that my collection grew greatly decreased. Now, I still collect Audubon birds, but I only can buy new ones while traveling west or north where the rest of the Audubon birds are sold. Although I can no longer identify the hundreds of birds in my collection by their calls, I can still identify each and every one of them by sight. Birds will always be my favorite animal, and they will always fascinate me.