Birding is a hobby I have taken up relatively late in life. In the early 90s, I began -as many folks have- feeding backyard birds at my home in Dedham, about 12 miles SW of Boston. Within a year my interest had grown to the point that I joined Project FeederWatch, a Citizen Science Project run by Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

Within a few years, I was keeping track of not just the birds I saw at my feeders, but also birds that I happened upon elsewhere in the course of day-to-day activities. As the list grew, so did my interest in seeing more of the birds of Massachusetts. Now seeing birds became not just a coincidental activity, but the goal of some of my trips.

Boston is a city with a long and rich birding heritage. And Massachusetts, with its habitat diversity and geographic location, is fortunate to host some 323 species of birds on a regular basis with more than another hundred species occurring occasionally. That gives me a lot of birding opportunities right "in my own neighborhood". Massbird.org has an excellent list of "Places to Visit" which can guide you to many of Metro Boston's best birding locales. I've prepared a map of some useful birding locales in the Southwestern Suburbs of Boston that may be worth a visit.

I am a member of several organizations whose websites provide valuable information to birders and other outdoor enthusiasts in Massachusetts. These include the Massachusetts Audubon Society, The Trustees of Reservations, the Brookline Bird Club, The Nature Conservancy, and the American Birding Association.