By Julia Craven
Birding in New York can be a dazzling adventure.
On a walk through the thick of Central Park in the spring, you’re likely to see a sunshine-colored warbler or an ash-tinted cuckoo. Inwood Hill Park, in the fall, is home to shorebirds and kinglets, while long-eared owls and loons nestle on Governor’s Island during winter. It’s a welcome reprieve from the busyness of the city.
You can go birding almost anywhere, and since the pandemic, many people have. In 2020, interest in the hobby increased, leading more women and people of color to enter the field. One indicator of its skyrocketing popularity? The National Audubon Society’s app was downloaded twice as often in March 2020 than the year prior. There are at least 45 million bird watchers in the U.S., according to the most recent data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and 36 percent are under the age of 45.
During the early months of the pandemic, Dodai Stewart, a writer at large for The New York Times, saw birding as a reason to leave her apartment and go for a walk. “There were sightings of a barred owl in Central Park in October 2020, and I saw on Twitter that there was someone leading a bird walk to find it. I had so much fun walking around the park with someone knowledgeable. It was a group, so it felt safe. I saw the owl and it was so, so cool. [Then] I bought binoculars and started going by myself,” she says.
“I had a spark bird experience, like a lot of birders,” says Cheryl Wischhover, a beauty reporter who also picked up birding in the last few years. “I was spending some time upstate and saw this really bright red bird flying around. It clearly wasn’t a cardinal. And I was like, ‘God, what is that red bird?’ I found some terrible binoculars, tried to look at it, Googled, and discovered it was a scarlet tanager. This is a bird I had never heard of. I don’t even know how to describe it, but finding out that bird’s name lit something in me — like, ‘wow, now I need to know all the birds. What are all these birds that I’m seeing?’”
Birding’s rise in popularity is not surprising. There’s the ease of the hobby – it requires only a curious mind, a field guide, and if you’d like, a pair of binoculars and/or a high-quality camera – and its analog nature. It’s a nice, peaceful alternative to sitting inside, hunched over your laptop.
“I already like taking walks, and birding gave me a new reason to,” says Stewart. “But it’s also that you’re staying quiet, you’re going slowly, you’re listening to sounds, you’re wondering if you heard a tweet, or a whistle, or a coo. It requires you to slow down and take things in,” she says, adding that her preferred birding locale adds to the appeal.
“There’s something really special about birding in a city that is associated with being very busy, very hurried, very noisy. It reminds you that you can find a non-rushed, quieter, slower-paced moment.”
Birding has health benefits, too. There are the obvious ones, like being outside in nature, walking, and spending time away from your phone. But according to a piece in the Times, studies suggest that “there might be something especially healthy about birds in particular” and that hearing birdsong can “improve mental well-being.” It also encourages deep focus, which feels harder than ever to find during the day-to-day rush of our lives.
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For those interested in picking up the hobby, spring is one of the best seasons to begin (“spring and fall migration are the most exciting times to be a birder in New York. Those are my peak birding times,” says Wischhover) but late winter has its own benefits, as the birds in your area may be easier to see due to less leaf coverage.
In her new book Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard, author, evolutionary biologist, and birder Joan E. Strassmann advises novices to start close to home, appreciating more “common birds.”
In addition to field guides, there are apps that can help you identify what you’re seeing. “There’s a free bird identification app called Merlin, run by Cornell University, which has a huge and very involved ornithology department,” says Wischhover. “You can either load a description or a photo into the app. And the coolest function is if you hear a bird making sounds, it’s sort of like a Shazam for birds. It’ll listen and give you what it thinks that bird is. An old-fashioned book is really helpful, too — like the Sibley Guide.”
Both Stewart and Wischhover recommend joining birding groups, with Stewart recommending Feminist Bird Club, Linnean Society, and Audubon, and Wischhover mentioning the American Birding Association. “Going with a group, you meet new people who are more knowledgeable, and everyone’s always been welcoming,” Stewart says.
Going with a group adds a layer of safety, too, as women – though the majority of birders – can run into issues of harassment in the field. For women of color, additional microaggressions add insult to injury, such as having their identification of birds questioned. (Let’s not forget how, in May 2020, birding was in the news for weeks after a white woman called the police on Christian Cooper, a Black man birding in Central Park.)
“I did think of birding as an older person thing and that it wasn’t a hobby with any diversity,” says Stewart. “And through doing this, I’ve discovered that a lot of younger people are into birding. I discovered that there are Black Birders, and there’s Black Birders Week. It’s opened my eyes to how many people are into this.”
But the best part? For anyone hoping to get started, it can be as easy as walking out the door — literally.