Name: RAS Member Meeting
Start: 2025-09-18T18:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-09-18T21:00:00-04:00
Location: First UU Church of Richmond

Description:

Doors open at 6:00 pm for a social gathering and light refreshments.
Meet other RVA birders!
Our speaker will begin at 7:00 pm.
Topic:

RaptorQuest
Scott Harris spent 17 months chasing 53 Raptors across 34 states—his version of a Raptor Big Year. RaptorQuest is about his adventures, misadventures, successes and failures. From -36 degree days, to ones over 100 degrees, to just getting on the bird just in time, to the frustrations of missing one by minutes. It’s about the birds — of course — but it’s also about
the people he met, the things he learned and why he’s already working on his next adventure.
Presenter:
Scott Harris
Scott Harris and his wife Randi retired to South Carolina in March of 2020, something Scott will tell you was one of the best decisions they have made in their 45 years of marriage. It was also when he first started birding – a hobby he never imagined himself participating in, but now can’t imagine living without.
They sold their long-time home and business, Mustang Marketing, a marketing/branding company they had owned for 35 years. They are blessed that both their children and their grandson are also in South Carolina.
While in California, Scott had a syndicated newspaper column and two weekly radio shows. He and his son Justin also hosted a Los Angeles Dodgers weekly live radio show. Scott sat on dozens of boards over the years, including Boys & Girls Club, United Way, The Sheriff’s Foundation, Pepperdine University, Moorpark College and California State University
Northridge.
In the month before leaving Ventura County, Scott was honored as Man of the Year, with his company having won Business of the Year two years previously. His interests and hobbies include the largest collection of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in the world, playing harmonica in a blues band and he has written more than fifty books in the past seven years - though the one he’ll be discussing today is his first entrée into the world of
birding and birds.
That book, RaptorQuest: Chasing America’s Raptors, is the story of his year-long adventure tracking down every species of Raptor in the Lower 48 states. And today, we’ll learn about his adventures, misadventures, successes and failures.