I realized a few years ago that I had taken quite a few pictures. Not only that, most of them seemed to be of birds. After that realization, I started looking through the various folders in the "pictures" section of my computer. I realized then that "quite a few" didn't adequately describe this hoard of images. Thousands? No, Tens of thousands! Also, most of the photographs ranged from, "Why did I save this one," to, "Hey! This one isn't so bad!." I have many photographs of some species, but only a few of others.

It was then I realized I also had quite a few not-so-bad bird, animal, and scenery photographs. It was also about then that I thought maybe one of these days, I'll put them together in a book. So, eventually, I did. My first photo book was a collection of photographs showing the life of the Great Blue Herons at Lake Logan, Ohio, "Nature's Way: The Great Blue Heron." After it was published, it got a really great review from an outdoors writer in Maine by the name of George Smith. George has excellent credentials: Award winning newspaper columnist, outdoors writer, television show host, former executive director of the Sportsmen's Alliance of Maine, Plus, the author of a really enjoyable book, "A Life Lived Outdoors."

I figured if a man with George's credentials liked my book about Great Blue Herons, maybe I should try another photo-nature book. The second book, "Nature's Way; The Mute Swans of Lake Logan," was a sort of rush project. It was my opinion that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) was justifying the killing of all Mute Swans in Ohio by using a false premise: According to them, the Mute Swans were interfering with the so-called "re-introduction" of the Trumpeter Swan here in Ohio.

This book, "Nature's Way: Birds of the Hills," is an attempt by me to gather together some of my better photographs of the birdlife available for observation here in the Hocking Hills of southeast Ohio.