Okay, I've geeked out about Wheeler all week, this will be my last post and it should be out of my system.
Saturday night after a long day of pushin' seed at the Bird Store I collapsed on the couch to read my Raptor of the American West by Brian Wheeler. After watching his photography technique I had an even larger respect for the number of photos and variety of angles of the birds in the book. I started reading the acknowledgment section to see if I recognized anyone. That's one of my favorite things to do with bird books is to go over the acknowledgement section. I get so excited if there's a Minnesota name in there, I feel like a cheerleader screaming "Go Team!" Anyway, I was reading through the gigantic list and of course found a few recognizable Minnesota names like: Dudley Edmondson, Dave Gilbertson, Mark Martell, Frank and Kate Nicoletti, Matt Solensky, Sharon Stiteler... I must have reread that last name about ten times before I started hyperventilating. I asked Bill to read through the list to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Yes, my name spelled correctly is in the acknowledgments. To the best of my knowledge I'm the only Sharon Stiteler in the birding community. There is another Sharon Stiteler, but she's a diving champ and aerobic instructor and I'm sure when she googles her name wonders who the birding weirdo is that's out there.
Bottom line is, if that is my name in there, I don't know what it is that I did. To the best of my knowledge I've never met or encountered Brian Wheeler until the last month or so. I think my biggest fear is that somewhere there's information about raptors out there with my name on it and it's not really my information, that my name is in there by mistake. I'm terribly excited to have my name in print on one of the best raptor books out there, I just want to know what I did to deserve it and make sure there's not another Sharon Stiteler taking over in the birding community. I wondered momentarily if it's my evil twin, but Bill pointed out that I am my own evil twin so that blows my theory.