“Hold on tight as a family when you are traipsing around. Nothing compares to the precious time looking up, down, and around with the ones you love.” — the Van Beeks
Thank you for joining us here. We created this venue to share information about our feathered and featherless friends, post trip reports of our family adventures, provide links over to some awesome birder and nature sites (but read ours first!), highlight news that affects this Big Blue Planet of ours, and offer sundry other tips and advice as we think of them. The Great Outdoors await all of us. Our family mantra is to look up, down, and all around!
Who Are We?
We are the Van Beeks – Steve, Beth, Skye, and Hope. Dad and Mom have been enjoying nature for quite a while, and we have intentionally brought our children along for this lifelong good nature(d) joy ride. Occasionally, our fluffy sheepdog comes along with us too.
Steve is constantly lugging his binoculars to take short escapes from the mundane. When he goes on an actual vacation, his backpack (always goes in the overhead bin when flying) gets heavier with camera lenses, scopes, and tripods. Steve holds a doctorate in Political Science, and was a tenured professor at San Jose State University in the Bay Area of California, before heading back to his childhood stomping grounds on the East Coast. Steve was the Associate Deputy Secretary of Transportation in the Clinton Administration, a Vice President of Airports Council International-North America, President of the Eno Foundation, and is currently working for a transportation firm based in London. He also is an adviser on transportation needs to NATO. In his spare time, Steve regularly looks out the kitchen window for backyard birds, and lugs his gear down to our local lake and nearby rivers hoping to hear bird calls, spot some feathers above in the trees, or watch majestic eagles and hawks catch thermals and soar heavenward. He is constantly cajoling the other members of the family to go on vacations that entail lots of birding opportunities. Interspersed with family pictures on our computer are a gazillion photos of nature that are waiting to be edited and posted here.
Beth has been into nature since she was young. Her parents and their friends built a funky A-frame cabin made out of telephone poles in the Rocky Mountains, and it is true that her dad gave her a fishing pole and a tackle box as a sixteenth birthday present. Beth’s paternal grandfather was a landscape artist who loved painting the American West, so she keeps that area of the country close to her heart. She has fond memories of rafting through slick rock canyons, hiking up to some amazing mountain peaks, watching hummingbirds dart in and out of wildflowers in mountain meadows, and sitting by campfires while shooting stars danced across the night sky. Beth holds a doctorate in History and specializes in Early America and Early Modern England. She was also a tenured professor at San Jose State University before making the gut-wrenching decision to pack up her books, say farewell to her students, and join her better half on the East Coast. After giving birth to twins, Beth chose to stay at home and chase them around the house. During her spare time, she decided to put her wanderlust to good use by cofounding a vacation planning agency. Beth still stays in touch with her colleagues and former students from academia, and more often than not either has her nose in a good book or is looking at a map and making big plans for the next family adventure.
Also in the family nest are twin teenagers, Skye and Hope, who have had to put up with their bird-crazy, tree-hugging, nature-loving, parents since they were wee ones. Typical teenagers, these two roll their eyes at the thought of getting out of bed to go on a grand adventure. But …. once we get to our final destination, they usually love it (especially if kayaks are involved).
Older than her sister by one minute, Hope has exhibited a keen interest in our feathered friends since she first started learning to talk. Much to the dismay of her parents, Hope’s first words weren’t “dada” or “mama.” Instead, she looked her parents squarely in the eye and signed the word “bird” before ever saying anything remotely comprehensible. We knew then and there that we had another birder in the family. Hope aspires to go into broadcasting or some aspect of theatre when she leaves the roost and heads off to college. A techie at heart, whenever we need help figuring out how to do something on the computer, Hope is our go-to girl.
Skye, not surprisingly given her first name, often has her head up in the clouds, pondering the imponderables. Skye is our family champion of preserving nature and gets really indignant when people overlook the needs of Mother Earth. She loves to get swallowed up in our comfy sofa to watch nature shows on the television, and when her parents least expect it, she regales them with information about molecular science that blows their minds. Skye is our beach walker/runner and sometime during her adolescence, she stopped just throwing shells back into the ocean and started trying to figure out what had been inside them. Skye intends to study marine biology in college.
Beth and Steve are not looking forward to being “empty nesters” in the not too distant future, so they decided to build this site as a necessary distraction. Thank you for finding us here — we fervently hope you enjoy our “Beeks on Beaks” musings!
Contact Us!
If you need to contact us, have Hedwig (snowy owl from Harry Potter’s world) swoop down with a message, pen a comment in any of our social networks, or simply feel free to send us a good old fashioned email to beeksonbeaks [at] gmail [dot] com! We’d love to hear from you and be a part of our bird-loving community.
