The visit to the Lab of Ornithology started off with a hike around the grounds while the guides pointed out various birds. To be completely honest, I pretty much couldn’t see any birds. This was because I a) have terrible vision and b) I have no idea what in the world I’m supposed to be looking at, because when I looked at the forest, all I saw were trees. Still, it was a lovely day for a hike and it was amazing to hear so many different types of birds chirping all around us once I began to differentiate between the sounds.

I think one of the most amazing things about the Lab of Ornithology was the shear amount of knowledge and learning in the place. It’s always so fantastic to see people that are really specialized talking about their field because their excitement and enthusiasm really shines through. Seeing how much knowledge was in this lab just for birds was truly astonishing and really made me think about how humankind has amassed such a huge collection of information about so many subjects. One of the guides mentioned that we’ve only documented maybe 10-20% of all the species that exist or have existed on Earth, even after thousands of years of human existence on this planet, and that made me think about how little we know about the world. The ocean floor is less well mapped out than the surface of Mars, and that fact really shows how little we actually know about our planet.

There’s so much to learn about the world and I think it’s great how we can see from places such as the Lab of Ornithology that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants and continually building on foundations of past human beings to discover more, learn more, and create more.