Just birding in the park, or, Winging it with Bob Shanman
After three decades serving South Bay birders, Bob Shanman has closed Wild Birds Unlimited. But he’s not retired from birding by Bondo Wyszpolski This is a story about a shop that’s closed and a store owner who’s retired, but of course there’s more to it than that. Both the man and the store had a great impact on the Beach Cities, an impact that is still felt and whose influence will continue to resonate. This past summer, with subdued fanfare, Bob Shanman closed Wild Birds Unlimited, a business he’d run for more than a quarter of a century, first in Torrance and later in Redondo Beach. Items for sale included bird food, bird feeders, and bird baths. My first thought was that, like so many shops and restaurants, it was another casualty of the pandemic. Well, it was briefly, but soon business again took wing. Bob Shanman in Polliwog Park, where he and fellow birders have documented 172 species of birds, equal to two percent of the world’s birds. Photo by Bondo Wyszpolski “The store was closed to physical traffic for five months,” Shanman says, over coffee at Manhattan Village, “but we continued to serve the communities with phone orders and online orders. Sometimes we were shipping…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com