My name is Helen Baines and I was born and brought up in the beautiful Lake District area of northern England. I've always been interested in the natural world and grew up watching all the David Attenborough nature documentaries on television. I was also very interested in geology, having such an inspiring area of geological diversity on my doorstep. This interest got me into taking geology classes at Grammar School and eventually getting a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology at Queen Mary College, University of London. After graduating, I went into teaching. My husband joined an American oil company and after travelling around the world with my family, I now live in Texas.
The webmaster on a cruise ship in College Fjord, Alaska in August of 2002
How did I get into serious birding? Well, having always been interested in nature's creatures, I really only started to watch birds when I moved to the USA in 1987. My husband's job took us to Southern California, and I saw so many new and unfamiliar birds, that I went out and bought a field guide. We were there for 4 years and after a short spell in Indonesia, we moved to the Houston area of Texas in 1992.
In Texas I began to keep a proper life list of all the birds I saw, using some computer software to track all my sightings. Prior to this in California, I had checked off my sightings in my field guide, so I was able to add these to my life list using the "AviSys" software. I keep lists for my backyard, Texas, North America, the UK and the many other places we have visited, such as New Zealand and Costa Rica.
I've had a Purple Martin colony in my backyard since 1999 and also enjoy the hummingbirds, which I see almost year round here. I've taken part in the Texas Parks and Wildlife Hummingbird Roundup every year since it started about 10 years ago. Every summer a colony of Mississippi Kites return to my subdivision and for 2 years I was very lucky to have them nest very close to my house. I was even able to get a couple of photographs of a parent kite on the nest with a nestling about ready to fledge.
Below: hiking in Santa Elena Canyon, SW corner of the park
This page was last updated on: July 11, 2008
I began taking photos at the age of 17, when my father gave me a Zeiss camera to take on a school trip to Switzerland. It was an old camera even then in the 1960's, but took great slides of the magnificent scenery in the area around Interlaken in the Bernese Oberland. Since then I have owned the following cameras: two good Olympus point-and-shoots, three 35mm film SLR's - the last one a Canon EOS Rebel SLR (in 2000) and then I moved on to digital. In July 2001, I started with an Olympus C700UZ 2.1 megapixel camera, which had an amazing 10x optical zoom (Olympus have ugraded this style of camera now with several models over the last few years). After about a year, I decided to try digiscoping, so bought a Nikon CoolPix 4500 to use with my Swarovski AT80HD spotting scope.
Then, early in 2004, I decided to upgrade to a digital SLR because we were taking a cruise through the Panama Canal. I chose the Canon EOS Digital Rebel (300D), which is a 6.3 megapixel camera and I also purchased a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 USM III telephoto lens, to photgraph the birds we might see on the cruise. Then in early 2006 it was time to upgrade the zoom lens and I bought the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 IS USM lens which has image stabilization and has improved my wildlife photography tremendously.
In January, 2007 I ugraded the camera, too, and got myself the Canon 30D. My 75-300mm IS lens will work fine with it, but I'm considering getting a single 300mm IS lens which can also be used with a 1.4X extender to give an additional 120mm making it a 420mm lens.
Camera equipment
Leaving the Panama Canal and passing under the Bridge of the Americas into the Pacific Ocean, Feb. 2004.
