My birdwatching interest began on a 1984 trip to Hawaii that Diane and I took to celebrate our 20 years of marriage. We went with a group that provides natural history tours (Questers-they don’t seem to be operating anymore). The itinerary for the trip may be viewed here. Part of the trip was checking out the Hawaiian birds. My interest grew from here. I came home and began intensive birding when I traveled on business, something that happened very frequently. I began keeping a list of what I saw, when and where right away.
In the summer of 1988, Sean and I travelled to Australia to support an Earthwatch project at a research station in Western New South Wales. The Kangaroo banding project is described here. The closest town to the outback research station was Broken Hill. We spent 2 weeks at the research station, and then another two weeks traveling around eastern Australia. I did a lot of birding, and my interest in doing international birding grew from here.
In 1986, Peter Kaestner announced that he was the first person in the world to have seen at least one species in every family in the world. When I got back from Australia, and latter heard about that, I thought that was a good goal for me.
The following is my journey to see at least one bird in every bird family in the world using the taxonomy of Clements 2025. I will refer to the taxonomy as it was in 1988 when I started this endeavor. The families are in taxonomic order. I will do a second version with the families in calendar order.
