About

Writing Without Spruce Trees was inspired by a project for a college English course. It gained its name from the idea that the writing that will be posted here will be just that, here and not being printed; it won’t take paper. No paper, no spruce trees, hence the blog title 🙂 This is what you get when you give a naturalist a blog…

This blog may seem all over the place sometimes. It is a place for me to put my thoughts into words and look at them in a physical medium, so it will not be bound to one topic all the time. Expect writing that would not be out of place in a “diary” blog–recounts of trips I’ve taken and experiences I’ve had–alongside more essay-oriented posts forwarding conversations or ideas that I have had. The common tenor that I expect to run through this blog is that everything, or most everything, that I post here will relate to the natural world. As a birder, a novice Ode and Lepidoptera enthusiast, a former Zoo volunteer, and a conservationist, my thought trail always seems to lead back to animal life and biology in some way.

Mike Hudson, is me–the author of the vast majority of what will appear on this blog. I am a college student at Washington College, in Chestertown, on Maryland’s upper Eastern Shore. I first became interested in birds and the natural world when my grandfather taught me how to draw the birds that frequented his feeders, yard, and the parks near his house. Since those early days of exposure to our wild neighbors, my interests have expanded to include many aspects of the conservation, science, and enjoyment of the natural world. I have been involved in the conservation of shorebirds–namely the Red Knot, rufa subspecies, for about eight years. I band shorebirds in New Jersey with the New Jersey Shorebird project almost every May, was one of  several guest speakers at the Celebrate the Delaware Bay conference hosted by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network, and was featured in the book “Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95”, by award winning author, Phil Hoose. I have also interned with the American Birding Association, working at their Camp Delaware young birders’ camp and I spoke at the first Mid-Atlantic Young Birders’ Conference they hosted in 2012. I have volunteered at the Chester River Field Research Station for three years now, learning about the bird banding process there.