K.C.: When and how did you become interested in birds? Scott: I've been interested in natural history for as long as I can remember -- I was one of those kids who was always dragging home salamanders and snakes. I had a general interest in birds all through childhood, but it really intensified in college when I took a course in ornithology, and got hooked on the science of birds as much as the sport of them. Although I'm not a scientist by training, what I really enjoy today is the chance to contribute (at least a little) through the modest field research I do with saw-whet owls and a few other species. K.C.: How did this book come about? Scott: There was no "eureka" moment; I've always been fascinated by migration, and the desire to do a big, sweeping book that married the drama of the phenomenon with an explanation of how birds migrate, and the conservation challenges they face, just grew up organically, I suppose. I worked on the book sporadically for about three years, doing preliminary research, then once I had a contract with Farrar, Straus & Giroux I spent another three years doing all of the travel and writing. It was probably the most fun I will ever have doing a book. If anything, you can trace its origins back to the autumn when I was 12 years old, and my parents took me to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary (near our home in eastern Pennsylvania) for the first time. We happened to hit one of the best migration days of the season, and the sky was just full of hawks -- and I got hooked on raptors, and on migration in general. K.C.: What was the best experience during your three years of research? Scott: Boy, it's hard to pin down just one experience. I was stunned by the sight and sound of half a million Sandhill Cranes on the Platte River in Nebraska; by experiencing a fallout of exhausted songbirds in Alabama that had just flown across the Gulf of Mexico; flocks of hundreds of thousands of hawks migrating through Mexico. I could go on and on, because in a way, every bird that migrates is a miracle worth celebrating. One of the best aspects of the book was the chance to visit some far-flung or remote places, like Izembek National Wildlife Refuge on the Bering Sea in Alaska, Maya ruins in the rainforest of Belize or an old ranch on the pampas of Argentina. It's a big world, and birds migrate through all of it. K. C.: Are you still a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer? Scott: No, I dropped that column some years ago -- shortly after the book came out in 1999. Now I'm a full time freelance writer who specializes in natural history, particularly birds. And I'm starting a new book that retraces the journey that Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher took 50 years ago when they wrote "Wild America," and I'll use it as a framework to report on the state of wild America today. The book is due out in the fall 2005 to coincide with the anniversary of that trip. K.C.: I so appreciated your debunking the elitist birder notion in your book. I am regularly saddened when people come here (to Charter Sanctuary) for a bird walk and respond to the question "Are you a birder?" by shuffling their feet and looking at the ground and then saying, "Not really. I don't know them all, I just like to watch them." I always tell them that I don't know them all, either, so if we see something we don't recognize, we'll figure it out together. Scott: Amen. I am not a hotshot birder and never will be, but I get a kick out of watching the danged things. If someone just watches sparrows (even if they don't know they're sparrows), then they're a birder. Period. Kay Charter is the author of "For the Love of Birds", and a regular contributor to The Traverse city Record-Eagle in her column called "On the Wing".