Welcome, old friends.

Trey (right) and I (left) at Hawksbill Summit, the highest peak of Shenandoah National Park.

So, here’s the thing. I’ve never had a website before. I have blogged before, however, for a few months at a job in South Carolina. I worked at a bird banding station on Kiawah Island where we blogged about our daily doings at the station, about the birds we caught, about the direction of the wind and about the sunrises by the river. I really enjoyed that part of the job. I would like to continue to stretch my writing muscles, so here’s a quick downward dog to warm up.

My name is Brendan. I am 30 years old and I work as an ornithologist on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Weird calling myself an ornithologist, as like many others I suffer from a bit of imposter syndrome and don’t feel academically adept enough to be labeled an -ologist of any kind, but it works as a concise title for the work I do. Aside from my “career” or whatever, I identify as a naturalist and an observer. An appreciator, if you will. I have a special affinity for trembling leaves, hence the title of this blog. I have felt a handful of true, deep moments of presence in my life, and all of them have been sparked from observing a breeze speak through leaves. These moments are at the core of who I am and what I live for.

A male Hawai’i ‘elepaio (Chasiempis sandwichensis). This is one of the species I work closely with in the forests of Hawai’i Island.

I am writing this post from the kitchen table at my dad’s house in my hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia. I am visiting family for the holidays. One of my oldest, dearest friends came to visit last week. We hadn’t seen each other for over a decade, which felt unreal. We spent a few days catching each other up on our lives and what inspires us and what music we listen to and all that good stuff while traveling through the ancient Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. After listening to me ramble about all the things I ramble about, he suggested I start a blog, something I had been thinking about for some time now. Well, Trey, here is said blog.

Photography is a consistent practice of mine, so I plan on sharing pictures to accompany my words to communicate to the void of the internet my daily life. In this blog you will find tales from the wilderness of Hawai’i, stories of birds and bugs and maybe even people from time to time. I do not intend to be incredibly diligent on editing the writings of this blog; if I did so, I would seldom publish a post.

But here I am publishing a post, which I will attempt to continue to do so throughout the year with some semblance of regularity. We’ll see where this goes.