Club member Carolyn Cooper will present her topic: Accidental Big Year: Birding Festival and Nature Travel Tips from my Nomadic Wanderings.

When your best-laid plans go awry, sometimes you just have to wing it. In a tale resembling Innocents Abroad meets Into the Wild, Carolyn Cooper recounts how 2015 accidentally became her Big Year as she crisscrosses the country from the Pacific Northwest to Texas to Southern California and through the Southwest looking for a new home — and new birds. Cooper plans to educate, entertain, and inspire with tips, photos, and budget-friendly recommendations for your own adventures as she shares how to find 96 species in 3 hours in a mile, why rockhounding is a competitive sport, what you should not bring back as a souvenir from a birding festival, and much more.

Carolyn Cooper – Nomadic by nature, Carolyn Cooper has lived and worked throughout the U.S. at everything from computer programmer to stand-up comic, principally in places with egrets, ibises, parrots, and flamingos. Even as a child she was interested in nature and earth sciences, but she didn’t get the birding bug until moving within walking distance of the Olympic National Park in Washington State. Now she is amassing a library of natural history guides and looks forward to her next adventure — who knows when or where.