Cuba! with Martin Selzer

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This program highlights Martin’s first ever trip to Cuba. While the rest of the world has been visiting the largest island in the Caribbean for decades, open travel there for Americans has been restricted until recently. Join Martin as he recounts his People to People birding and cultural 10-day adventure to our neighbor to the south that is filled with avian treasures, UNESCO sites and cultural delights.

Martin began birding back in first and second grade when his aunt first took him to the bird banding demonstrations at Washington’s Crossing State Park and to the Spring and Fall New Jersey Audubon Cape May Weekends. Besides these trips, his early birding adventures were on many local Wyncote Audubon and Academy of Natural Sciences field trips.

Martin’s first trip outside the mid-Atlantic region was a Northeast Birding Workshop to Corpus Christi, TX in the spring of 1979. For some people it is a single bird or birding experience that hooks them on birds. For Martin, it was his aunt’s early influence on: “I would not have been bitten by the birding bug without her influence and her willingness to take me on all these trips.”

Since that initial trip to Corpus Christi, Martin has birded across North America, now taken 22 trips to the Caribbean, Central and South America, 8 trips to Europe, two trips to Africa and even managed to fit some birding in during a business trip to Australia. Although he considers shorebirds and raptors to be his favorite families of birds when home, it is really the spectacle of nature that he finds truly the most appealing and attractive part of birding. Whether watching Sandhill Cranes along the Platte River in Nebraska, witnessing the wonders of the Galapagos Islands or seeing 10,000s of geese in the Netherlands, these overwhelming wonders of nature are what make travel and birding so appealing.

Martin is an active local and world birder, is a member of ABA, DOS, and a life member of DVOC.

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