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Why Birding?
801 Plays7 months ago
Chill with Dexter and Jason as they talk about the anticipation of Spring migration and why birding is an incredibly rewarding activity. They get into those formative and continuing birding experiences with a Tufted Titmouse sparkbird, various owls that sometimes sell you lollipops, and a single Red-Flanked Bluetail in New Jersey. They discuss how community and “Bird Nerd” euphoria are created through birding, for example, chillin' with some blinged-out (banded) Common Grackles. This episode is about why YOU deserve to be outside looking at birds, like the perfect American Woodcock.
Be sure to follow our podcast on Instagram at @thebirdjoypd and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
Introduction to Bird Joy Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
We want to welcome everybody back to the Bird Joy podcast. I'm Dexter Patterson. I'm Jason Hall. This podcast is for all the homies across the globe. Just a simple spot where we can celebrate Bird Joy together. That's what's up. It's all about the Bird Joy and hopefully you're ready for some Bird Joy. Let's go.
00:00:20
Speaker
Let's go.
Spring Migration Excitement
00:00:22
Speaker
So, last week we basically, you know, we just basically nerded out about birds for like 35 minutes, didn't we? Yeah, it was pretty great. It was pretty great. The only thing missing was like a nice cold beverage and like a lawn chair, you know. Yeah.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hopefully, maybe the people listening, maybe they have that ice cold beverage. Maybe they're sitting in their lawn chair with their bins, with their Merlin app out, you know, you know, looking at some backyard birds that might be arriving here, you know, late winter, early spring. Everybody's starting to see some newer birds are starting to pop up. It's kind of exciting. It's kind of exciting. A couple of little flycatchers here and there. I'm here and I'm popping up and
00:01:01
Speaker
You know, some fun shorebirds starting to show up, I think, in a couple of spots along the
Birding in Madison and Milwaukee
00:01:05
Speaker
coast. So it's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be real interesting. It's so crazy. So you're out there. You're in Philly. I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. We definitely have two different perspectives of what this spring migration is like looking and feeling like.
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure, man. Like, I'm looking around the river inlets and thinking about driving to the shore, what we do out here. And then we got, you know, the songbirds don't show up in the mountains for a little bit yet. So not too much to do up there. Yeah, man. Like, I don't know what it's like out there. You guys have all that lakeshore line. That's different.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I mean, Madison, we're actually we sit like the city of Madison sits on an isthmus. So we're basically surrounded by lake. When you talk about lake habitat, that is definitely what we're dealing with. Really kind of lucky to be surrounded by some pretty nice old growth forests and some other things. So
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah it's it's pretty sweet to be able to get kind of like that mixture of like the waterfowl coming in and shorebirds and stuff like that but then those forests kind of go in and yeah a couple little flycatchers starting to pop their heads in the blackbirds are back which is kind
00:02:13
Speaker
When I start seeing the blackbirds, I get excited, man. Like, it's like, yep, yep. Red-winged blackbirds kind of slid in quick, you know. Next thing you know, like a few days later, I'm hearing some grackles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta love that.
00:02:29
Speaker
How far are you from Milwaukee? Like, can you drive that way? Milwaukee is like an hour. Oh, that's not bad. Pretty nice. So I try to get to Milwaukee as much as I can, which is kind of cool because like with the club, we do a monthly event in Madison, but then we also have our Milwaukee club leader Rita, who's leading up to things up there in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is very the Great Lake, right? With Lake Michigan.
00:02:54
Speaker
They're like right on the flyway. So they get, I mean, I'm talking about like, I'd be looking at Milwaukee and I'm like, man, y'all got it all. It's crazy what they get. Like, I'm not going to say like, we're not lucky or mad. Lake Michigan is like an ocean. It's so big. The stuff that they get kind of flying through there is a little ridiculous. And then they have parks up and down that shoreline, which is really cool. We'll be up there in May for sure.
Milwaukee Birdathon Excitement
00:03:20
Speaker
We'll be up there in May for our little birdathon. That sounds nice.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, get up there and try to see as many birds as we can in a 24 hour period up there. And getting up to Milwaukee just makes a lot of sense. So we did it last year. It was a lot of fun. Close to 100 species. It gets crazy that time of year. That sounds lovely. I can't wait, man. I can't wait. I'm still getting a little bit of a shiver when I walk outside. Oh, shivers. And you had mentioned, you know, because I was like, springs here.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, I told you. I told you to be careful. You're like, oh, thanks. And we were kind of probably in fake spring. And I'm out today. And guess what I saw? A few flurries. Oh, and a few flurries. Yeah, I was like, yeah, thanks, Jay. Yeah. Spring is definitely here.
00:04:06
Speaker
I came back in the house and ate some hot food. I was like, you know what, let me just stop being extra and just let me wait. Let me, I gotta be patient, you know? And that's one of the, one of the things you learn with birding is to be a little patient, slow down a little bit. But it's not easy because the, you know, once you get started birding, the anticipation is high.
00:04:24
Speaker
And you have no control over how quickly the clock turns. And when the birds start coming back and you're looking at you like refreshing the birdcast page to see when the migration is going to happen, which is something we'll probably talk about in an episode. And just like, man, you start to see Florida light up and you start to see South Carolina light up in Georgia and you're like,
00:04:44
Speaker
Come on, please. It's happening. I know, I know. I'm so excited, man. It's
Personal Spark Bird Stories
00:04:50
Speaker
just, you know, it's just these simple pleasures of birding, you know, which I think we're going to talk about. Birding, birding. You know, we keep saying birding, birding. Why birding, Jason? Why birding? If you could tell people a story, a personal story, something that you look back on, where you were like, birding is for me. This is my jam. I am a birder. What's that? What's that story? What got you into birding?
00:05:13
Speaker
I feel like I should write you a check because I should probably be talking to my therapist about some of this. But birding, I tell people this, my spark bird was the tough to tit mouse, sketching that bird in an environmental science class that I had in high school.
00:05:28
Speaker
And that was great, but I didn't necessarily know at that moment that I was going to be a bird. I'll call that my spark bird, just because it's what caught my curiosity. How about you tell the people what a spark bird is? Because we talk about it as bird nerds, and some people might not know what a spark bird is, because I talk about a spark bird, and they were like, what is a spark bird? Is that an actual bird? What is a spark bird?
00:05:55
Speaker
It's the bird you use to jump your car when your battery's low. Right, right in the middle of these cold Wisconsin Philadelphia winters. No, it's a, it's, you know, so a spark bird is just probably your first formative memory.
00:06:10
Speaker
that you enjoyed around the observation of birds. And so for a lot of people, it can be very common birds. It can be rare birds, you know, like I'm sure, I'm sure somewhere around the United States, some people sparkbirds are now American flamingos because of last summer's
00:06:28
Speaker
Hurricane Ida throwing, throwing everybody around. It was Ida. But for me, that spark word was a tough to tit mouse. That's where my curiosity started. And it wasn't until years later where I was doing some, some of my formative for birding in a place called Peace Valley, which is a, it's like a, uh, uh, call those things a reservoir, a little bit north of me, a place called Bucks County. And, um,
00:06:51
Speaker
I was, you know, birding and I was having a good time and I was, you know, logging my species and everything. And I was near something called poo tree like like poo bear, like Winnie the Pooh. Right. And it's this tree that has, you know, this huge hole in it that looks like a little bear lives in there and eats honey.
00:07:09
Speaker
And you can walk in there and hang out with your kids. I guess it's kind of fun. But it's starting to get to dusk and I'm just walking around and I'm heading back to the car. And I turn this corner and just this big old great horn owl just looking me dead in the eye. And up until that point, I had never seen an owl, nonetheless found one by myself in person. I remember I just took the worst photos I could possibly take.
00:07:34
Speaker
I had no idea how to work the light exposure on my camera or anything. I just remember walking back to my Jeep and just thinking like, man, this is wild. I don't even want to go home. I just want to stay here till morning and keep walking in this forest. And I think that's, I had a lot of moments like that at Peace Valley specifically. And I think that that year, which is probably 2010, 2011 is where I was like, that's it for me. I'm pretty sure this is going to be
00:08:04
Speaker
Something I do for the rest of my life, man. The first time you hear one of those tufted tip mouse and then actually see one, which is kind of really crazy, like you hear it and you're like, what is that? Right? Because it's one, especially when you're new, you know, we're thinking about you're just getting into birding to hear a tufted tip mouse for the first time. You're like, what is that? Because it's not something you hear all the time. No, it's not.
00:08:29
Speaker
It's not. But that experience of finding or running into an owl for the first time, that changes you. Oh, it really does. I always tell the first time you have a stare down with an owl, I don't care what species it is. The first time that happens, you will never be the same. No. It's like you just stepped into a whimsical adventure. You changed immediately when you looked at that owl, right? Oh, yes. Absolutely. No, immediately.
00:09:00
Speaker
You looked at it like, wait a minute, what is happening to me? I'm no longer the same person that I was 0.5 miles ago. Whatever it was, you're into your journey. You are no longer the same person. No, you're not. And there's something about an owl that makes you feel like you're no longer in control of your own world.
00:09:22
Speaker
Hmm. Especially at dusk, because you're looking at him like, all right, we can see he or she can see me a lot better than I can see them. This is their hood. They about to go hunt. I'm just walking through here like a big dumb idiot. And you're just like, wow, like, what is what is going to happen for the next nine hours that is dark? What's this album going to be doing? Is it going to eat good? Yeah, it's going to eat good. Right. Like going to survive.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, right. Like, you're just like, yo,
Cultural Significance of Owls
00:09:46
Speaker
like, did I step into a Nat Geo episode or something? What is happening? But owls, I think, bring out that very primal curiosity, I guess I would call it, in birds, because owls are in so many things around our folklore and our storytelling from many different cultures. They're in a lot of children's books. You know, they sell lollipops if you're old enough to remember that. Right. A one, a two, a three.
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, young folks, you got to go look that up. Yeah, dating ourselves a little bit. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. But then when you see one in person, you're just like, the world is not so far away from me. Nature is not so far away from me because this this mystical creature I've heard about and people say they've seen, I've now seen one. You feel like you get into like this club. I've seen it myself.
00:10:37
Speaker
Yes, and I still have friends I have friends that are my buddy Jeff He's on these on the border in color birding like him and his girlfriend Angela They go out and they find like long-eared owls and they still to this day are like giddy little children When they find them and they're in their experience birdies matter of fact everyone I know
00:10:56
Speaker
that does that. One of our other board members, Katrina, I remember her texting us and she was at a park in Philly where there was like five fledged screech owls flying around or something. And I'm just like, that's insane. Like, I don't trust people that aren't excited by owls. They're not allowed to be friends with me.
00:11:12
Speaker
I mean, the thing is, I guess I can understand if they're like not excited because they're in awe. Yeah, that's fine. What is this? You know, if they're just ho hum. No, you got to get out of here. Yeah. Yeah. We might not be on the same vibration.
00:11:28
Speaker
You're going to get sick of me talking about that owl that we just saw. And you're not excited to see it, but I will not shut up about it. And I'm going to be so excited about it. Dude, do you remember that? Do you remember that one owl that we saw at this one play? I will never stop talking about it.
00:11:45
Speaker
It is a really good point because it actually it actually becomes an anchor for you to form a community and friendship like other people that you're able to see it with. Dope man. I'd love it. I always tell people that birds are like this window into the wonder and hearing you talk about how you got into birding.
Birding and Childhood Joy
00:12:03
Speaker
You mentioned the tufted tip mouse but then the great horned owl. It is kind of like that glimpse into the wonder.
00:12:10
Speaker
And it is so cool because as kids, we have these great imaginations. We could be anything. I think this is what I love about kids most is not only are they super honest, but they're so creative. That's what I think about when I think about birding, is it really takes me back to being that little dude.
00:12:31
Speaker
And you have a little dude, so I'm sure you're kind of seeing this right now. But this is the coolest part about being a little dude or a little person, little girl, whatever, our imagination.
00:12:44
Speaker
And we can be anywhere. We can see anything. We can be anything. And that's what I get from Birdie. It's like that glimpse into being little Dex. And it's so funny because my mom, and it's usually the other way around, but I got my mom into Birdie. So the younger person got the older person into Birdie.
00:13:05
Speaker
And it was so funny because my mom was never really into birds, which is kind of shocking because my grandpa was a birder. Her dad. And he used to take them out and they would go, they had a big family. He would take them to state parks and places that were free. Cause he had 11 kids.
00:13:22
Speaker
You know, so when you think about being a father of 11, it was the free stuff that they had to do. He would say pay attention and they'd be out camping or something and it'd be the aisle, right? And he'd be like, just listen. Grandpa was always telling them to pay attention. I got that bug, you know, which is really weird because my mom was not really into birds. All of a sudden she was like, my son is really into birds.
00:13:47
Speaker
I'm like, why? You know, like it made my mom kind of curious, like, wait a minute, what? Dex really likes birds. But like she said something to me one day and she said, I haven't seen you this happy since you were a little boy. Oh, wow. Right. So when I yeah, when I talk about that thread of like, it makes me feel like a little kid again, that imagination, the window into the wonder.
00:14:12
Speaker
That's it for me, bro. That feeling is where I was like birds and burning are for me. Yeah. Right. And I've had that same thing with the spark birds, but like that feeling of like, I feel better. Why do I feel better? And kind of zeroing in on the fact that like, I feel like a little kid again. I swear it's like this, uh, what they cut the youth potion, you know, like, Oh yeah.
00:14:35
Speaker
I feel when I'm out there like I just be feeling so good. I'm looking up, bro. I'm like, I've been hiking. It's been like three hours and I feel fabulous. Oh, that's lovely. That's lovely, brother. That's lovely. You know what the cool part is? When we go out with other folks, other newbies, you know, baby birders, as you like to call them.
00:14:54
Speaker
and we introduce them to a new species that they've never seen, you can watch that person turn into little whoever. You can watch them reconnect with a level of curiosity that they may not have felt a level of wonder. They may not have felt for quite a while for various reasons, because adulting is hard. Right?
00:15:15
Speaker
So that's, you know, that's just for the adults. It's even better when you do it with actual kids and you see them actually able to take advantage of the wonder of the real world. Go from imagination, imagining what a bald eagle looks like and then staring at one and seeing one or three blocks, three blocks from your neighborhood. Right. It's mind blowing. It changes you.
00:15:36
Speaker
It really does. It really does. And I love the way you talked about that return to the foundations of your childhood mind and your childhood curiosity and your childhood heart. You know, like that's really, you know, we don't talk about that enough. And I would argue that the most advanced experienced birders in the world still are chasing that. That feeling. You know, they're chasing that. I love. So we talk about like we talk about the outdoors.
Nature and Community Accessibility
00:16:05
Speaker
The lack of people like you and I that look like you, look like me, look like our peers, look like our homies. Why aren't we outside? When people ask, why birding? Because I'm like, you know what? Birding is that conduit to getting outside for me.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah. And when we get outside and it's so funny when we're talking about like this connection to being little again, little Dex, little Jason, the little homie and us when we see a bird, that feeling. But do you also remember when we were younger, we also spent more time outside? Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, man. You know.
00:16:42
Speaker
We didn't have as much, right? And we're not going to get on here and sound like old fogeys or anything. There wasn't as much for us to do indoors back in the day. You know, you could read, you could watch TV, but you had no control over what you were watching. It was whatever was on TV and Saturday cartoon. Yeah. You had like a few hours of Saturday cartoons and then like the news came on. You're like, I guess I better go outside. Yeah.
00:17:09
Speaker
But I had I had two younger brothers and most of the places we lived in California and Mississippi and Pennsylvania all had some general access to the outdoors and green space. Matter of fact, in California, when I grew up in Altadena, California, which is like in the foothills, the suburbs of Los Angeles, we had a big yard, bunch of fruit trees. So like my parents would just be like, go outside.
00:17:32
Speaker
If you want a snack, climb the avocado tree, climb the persimmon tree, grab an orange or a grapefruit. We had Chinese pears and grapevine, so we would be outside all day, just like Lord of the Flies. Just, you know.
00:17:44
Speaker
And that was pretty formative for me because something that we'll talk about probably in other episodes is just a level of comfort and safety in the outdoors. And so because I was exposed to that, there was a level of comfort I felt with going to walk in the forest and dusk. When I saw the owl, I wasn't necessarily afraid of the forest. I'm afraid a lot of other stuff.
00:18:06
Speaker
But not the forest, right? Like you said, that that birding is the thing that gets you outdoors. Birding was the thing that helped me stay outdoors. Right. Because I very easily could have fell into, you know, just the full rat race of life and everything else and all the glitz and glamour of
00:18:26
Speaker
You know, I'm being an adult, I guess, not feel that wonder anymore, you know. And so, yeah, I fully agree with you. And, you know, the best part about birding is even if you don't do it for three months, it's there waiting for you. It's ready to go. I highly doubt that you go three months without. I don't. I'm don't. I'm just saying that anybody knows anybody because they were like, well, for three months, I didn't go out and go on a hike and go to this park and do this. But you were sitting out front of your apartment.
00:18:56
Speaker
or your house or your townhouse or wherever you live and you notice the bird. Yeah, yeah, sure. Oh yeah, it is, it is. I think, so I always tell people that I had a kid, I was literally last week, went into a high school, it's an alternative high school, Malcolm Shabazz High School, which is really cool, high school, some brilliant kids there and it's, you know, it's named after Malcolm X and it's right here in the city of Madison and we're there and we're talking about biases in the outdoors and,
00:19:24
Speaker
and myth busting outdoors and different things. And like, I'm there with them and we're talking about all these things. And it was like, we were told for so long that the outdoors wasn't for us. The history of our country for so many years, people of color couldn't even go to our national parks. There was a student who was really kind of curious about what, why is that?
00:19:50
Speaker
You know, and I talked about like this idea of family traditions. Families would say, oh, we go camping here every year. Why?
00:19:58
Speaker
Oh, that's a tradition. Oh, we go here. We go to this national park every year. Why? That's a family tradition. For generations, black people did not have that opportunity to say every year we go to this national park. And if you're not going to national parks, you probably don't want to go to the local one or this one or that one. Right. Yeah. My answer to the student was for so long, we had no access to these beautiful places.
00:20:24
Speaker
where you might bump into a tufted tip mouse or a great horned owl. And it just wasn't a part of our traditions. I told them, I said, if we want to change that, we need to change that access. And once we get there and I told them, I'm like, this land is just as much yours as anybody else's. Our ancestors took care of this land better than anybody.
00:20:47
Speaker
Our ancestors were naturalists. Our ancestors were birders. Our ancestors knew a lot of things more that were more connected to this land than a lot of people realize. Absolutely. Than we even realized.
Everyday Birding Skills
00:21:02
Speaker
And I told that student, I said, we just got to start showing back up. We got to get back outside because we do belong here. And he's like, and when I'm there, what does it mean to be birding? What is birding? I said, are you paying attention?
00:21:16
Speaker
to the birds and the sounds that you hear. Are you simply paying attention? That's like I usually do. And I was like, then you've been burning for longer than you realize. That's right, man. And it's wild because it's not a just just we are disconnected from some of the, let's say, more traumatic and violent things that our ancestors may have gone through when it came to accessing the outdoors. But you can hear it
00:21:39
Speaker
and you can feel it and you can see it. And a lot of our communities, when it comes to the feeling of safety in the outdoors to go and explore even your local community park, we take kids out from various majority BIPOC schools or in and around Philly and we get questions that are mostly around safety. You know, am I going to get bit by a fox? Is the great blue heron going to chase me? Do I need to worry about spiders?
00:22:05
Speaker
You know, like real questions. Yeah. They're like, they're like straight up. Right. Like, like are there, you know, you know, we go to a place called John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge and you know, it's the first urban refuge. It's beautiful. You know, kids are asking like, are there, are there.
00:22:21
Speaker
Bears out here, are there wolves, coyotes, right? No one was able to, I guess up until that moment, answer those questions necessarily. And so we love doing that, right? Because breaking down those barriers is what's gonna get people to return to the space, right? And like you said, our ancestors were already outdoors.
00:22:41
Speaker
A lot of us were already outdoors. The difference is now we're bringing it to the surface. There are just a number of organizations trying to get black and brown folks outside specifically for the observation and enjoyment of nature. Right. We've been outside for a bunch of different things, but particularly for the observation and enjoyment of nature. And there's a lot of groups that are focusing on sustainable hunting and foraging practices. Like this just all this beautiful stuff happening.
00:23:06
Speaker
And to me, it's less of a let's get outside once and for all and more of a let's return to the outside and take the things that our ancestors fought for and some of the trauma that they endured and let's flip that into joyful access to the outdoors. Let's flip that into bird joy. Let's flip that to make sure that every second we are out there, we are honoring them.
00:23:28
Speaker
by finding community, finding safe place, being connected to the birds as a litmus test for what's going on in the environment, right? Like it's just, there's so many avenues birding can take folks. And so when someone asks you why birding, man, that is a deep, deep question.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, there's so many avenues, like you said, but there are so many benefits. And when we continue to center around this question of why birding, there are so many benefits of birding. It's so much bigger than just a recreational activity or this new hobby. You and I, we've had conversations about the benefits of birding for us as individuals. And we can go deeper into that as we continue to grow with the pod, but it was like,
00:24:14
Speaker
these mental health benefits, whether it's facing trauma, recovering from trauma, releasing anxiety from just kind of the rat race of life in general of people of color in this country.
Mental Health and Birding Benefits
00:24:28
Speaker
And just people as general, like times are hard. People are struggling. Release mental health benefits, whether it's depression, anxiety, all these different things, being outside, that helps.
00:24:39
Speaker
And then it's like these physical health benefits of like just kind of getting outside and forest bathing and the research behind being outside and simply just being in nature and hearing bird calls lowers cortisol levels and all these different things like these physical health benefits of just being outside and nature, right? Access in nature. And for us, you mentioned last week, the on ramp is birds.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah. And we're outside. We're enjoying birds. We're not just enjoying birds. It's hard to enjoy birds and not enjoy everything else. Not enjoy the running water, not enjoy the vitamin D from the warm sun, not enjoying the wind, not enjoying the fresh oxygen, not enjoying hearing all these different sounds, be it birds or bugs or frogs or squirrels or whatever. Right. It is just like it's so much more than the birds.
00:25:32
Speaker
So I start thinking about, man, there are so many benefits of birding and being a birder, just purely recreational. It's fun for me. And I think a lot of people are really like, they're kind of torn when they see how we bird like this, this stuff makes us happy.
00:25:47
Speaker
And it like gives us energy and we're excited and we're being goofy about it. And it's like because it's fun. It is a recreational activity. It actually is fun to us. And I think that's what a lot of people are shocked about is like they get outside and they find themselves they're paying attention. That means you're birding, but you're also having fun.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah, it is. Wow. Because the fun part, I will tell you, for the most part, I think is defined by the community you surround yourself with when you're burning. Talk to them. And like, so it's the, you know, and we can talk about our recent birding trips, right? Like, so I just went out my little bird nerd moment of the week. I went to chase a red flanked blue tail, which is a bird that should be in Siberia. Not here.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah, not in America. Definitely not in someone's backyard in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. But I was out there by myself and I was standing there for like 90 minutes by myself. I wasn't seeing this bird and it was getting on my nerves and I was hungry.
00:26:47
Speaker
And it's weird, right? Because I'm in somebody's yard. And the folks that own the property, I didn't meet them, but they had signs up. I had heard they're really nice to everybody. So that was great. It made me feel comfortable. Very clear, you can stand here, park here.
00:27:02
Speaker
you know, bird shows up there. And so, but I'm still in somebody else's yard. And even though they're cool with it, are the neighbors cool with it? Are the police cool with it? I'm out here by myself, so it's not like I'm with a big group. So, you know, obviously as a black man in America, I'm thinking different things, right, on how to make it obvious that, hey, I'm just here for the birds. And I'm getting ready to leave because I'm just getting kind of sad that I'm not seeing this bird and I drove like an hour and a half to come try and see it. Just as I'm getting ready to like put the lens cap on my scope, homie just pops right up.
00:27:32
Speaker
I don't know if he or she felt your pain. Just felt like I got to throw this dude a bone. He had a long week. He drove all the way out here to see me. I got to just give him a little shy shy, you know, just show him a little bit on the branch. And it did.
00:27:48
Speaker
I'm pretty sure it was a female. She gave me like five seconds and that's all I needed. And it made me so happy. But the key there was texting my wife. Got it. Exclamation points. You know, she's giving me the heart emoji. She's happy I saw it. Texting my bird homies. Hey, I saw the thing. They're happy for me.
00:28:07
Speaker
And without that, I would have still been happy to see the bird. It wouldn't have been the same if I couldn't share it with people that shared my values, that shared my desire to go and see these birds and, you know, people that we were growing this community with. A good example of why we approach birding some of the ways we do is because it's about the birds and it's about the birders. It's always something to keep in mind for folks when they're thinking about getting started is don't shy away from building a community.
00:28:33
Speaker
I love that you say community. So the co-founder of our club, Dr. Jeff Galligan, he always talks about when we're out at events and we're like our last event, we had 42 people there in a service dog. It was kind of cool, you know, throwing the service dog. Sometimes we find ourselves just looking at each other like, look at all these people.
00:28:52
Speaker
And it always comes back to the people. And I love seeing that community grow. And I love seeing people within the community becoming friends and now they're going out birding. And then this group is doing this and it's like, it is so cool because it always comes back to the community. That's why birding.
00:29:09
Speaker
Some of my favorite people in the world, I met through birding. That's right. I think about that. And I'm like, just just kind of letting that bird nerd flag fly.
Appreciating Common Birds
00:29:21
Speaker
I met all these people from all over the world, all over the world. I just love these people dearly. And I would have never freaking talked to one where they didn't know I was a bird nerd.
00:29:32
Speaker
I don't know. I know. That bird nerd flag is flying high. Yeah. And we need to actually make those bird nerd flags. We might need them. We might need them. You know, we might need them. But that is, I agree with you. 100% is the community. And I would say for me, it's also embracing the idea of being a bird nerd.
00:29:52
Speaker
This week, you talked about your bird nerd moment of the week. And for me, it was like, you know, it's kind of like early spring migration is happening. So like we started hearing red-winged blackbirds. And then all of a sudden, I started hearing some crackles. And I was like, oh. And I found myself like really getting excited about hearing these crackles. So I told myself, I was like, you know what? I'm going to pay attention to the crackles today.
00:30:19
Speaker
So I literally spent like an hour following like this small flock of grackles throughout like the UW Lakeshore path. So I went out just probably right before like my lunch break and before my next class I went out for like an hour and a half. Now I see this small flock of grackles and I'm like I'm just gonna hang out with these grackles today.
00:30:41
Speaker
So I hang out with him. And I was like, this was the moment. And I was like, one comes kind of pretty close to me. And I noticed Homie has some jewelry on. Hey. Meaning he was banded. And I was like, what? I got a banded grackle, a common grackle. And I was like, that moment I was like, all right, not only am I paying attention to this bird, this common bird, I think,
00:31:04
Speaker
I felt good that I was like giving this common bird attention. And I hope that people realize when they start birding that those common birds are super important. And when you actually find like moments to appreciate those common birds, those common sightings, you're really kind of in that bird nerd element.
00:31:23
Speaker
You know, that's right. Who cares that you see the American Robin all the time? Find some ways to like appreciate that bird in that moment. Same thing with the common grackle. So I'm like, wow, not only I'm like noticing the homie, but he has a band with that. That really kind of. What does that mean? What does that mean? So he's been bandied. People all over the world, they do bird banding.
00:31:44
Speaker
And what they'll do is they set up like these they call mist nets and mist nets allow you to capture birds and they capture the birds and they band them. They put these little tiny aluminum little bands with numbers on them. And they're actually assigned numbers through the actually through the U.S. government where you're able to track birds and you're tracking population, you're tracking their migration patterns, you're tracking where this bird may go.
00:32:10
Speaker
So it's citizen science, it's science as a whole, it's research as a whole, it's data collection. And it was really cool to see this bird with a band on. And I did my best to get a nice series of the bird, but I missed the last two numbers of the band.
00:32:26
Speaker
So I got all the information off the band, but the very last two numbers, and I still emailed the BBL to try to see if I could get some information on like where this burger was banded, who owned the band. So I'm hoping that they email me back despite not having those last two digits, but it was kind of cool to see that, but then also start to appreciate those little things about the Common Grackle.
00:32:51
Speaker
And I was looking at a male and it's about, it's about two o'clock. The sun's shining pretty good and it's hitting the grackle in a nice little way where you can actually see that the iridescence in the feathers. And I was like, so many people ignore this bird and like have no clue.
00:33:10
Speaker
how beautiful it really is. You know how many people I got with the iridescence on the grapple. We had a homie, John, he works with the Fairmount Park Conservancy and I took him out just to do some example birding before we did some events with them.
00:33:26
Speaker
And we had a grackle and it was down like a little little creek in the summer, like a little stream of water, very peaceful. And this grackle is down there just getting a drink of water, just chilling. And I was like, John, take these binoculars, look at that bird. And then when you see a turn towards the sun, watch the color. I thought I thought he was going to fall off the trail. He was blown away because it because, you know, the naked eye, it just looks, you know, looks like a blackbird. Right. And there's a lot of different species of blackbirds around us.
00:33:53
Speaker
But when that grackle hit that angle for the sun, I thought his heart was going to burst out of his chest. And to this day, he's like, that's my favorite bird, because it was an immediate change in perspective. You cannot look at a grackle the same way, or a blackbird in that sense the same way. Like every blackbird you look at, you're going to be like, oh, is it actually black? Is it brown? Does it have iridescence? Is it a grackle? Is it a red-winged blackbird?
00:34:18
Speaker
rusty blackbird. That's awesome, man. That's beautiful, man. Sound like you had a nice lunch break that day. Yeah, it was like, and then it was like the grackle led me to be like, oh, the morning dove. Another really common bird. And then I spent some time with the morning dove and like when they start cooling,
00:34:39
Speaker
you can notice like these iridescent patches of color and their nests that you typically don't see. I mean they have the beautiful eye ring and like those birds are there's so many colors in a morning dove they're kind of like this watercolor and like people they just think they're dumb and you know like oh they're so common but then like
00:35:01
Speaker
You don't really pay attention to like how beautiful, how intricate the colors are on them. And I did the same. So I moved from the from the grackle to the morning dove. And then I like I get that moment. It's cooling. And I see I see the blue and the gold in his neck kind of pop. And I like get I was like, this is great. I found myself nerding out about these common bird keeps happening. That's when I that's good birding.
00:35:29
Speaker
You know, don't get caught up, like people ask me, what is birding? Don't get caught up in the list stuff. Don't get caught up in like the big year competition part of it. Find yourself appreciating those normal birds, those normal sightings like the common grackle in the morning dove in the house French like we talked about in the past.
00:35:49
Speaker
or a downy woodpecker or whatever it might be, enjoy that bird in that moment because there's always something to see. And it's wild because grackels, as common as they are, they are threatened. They have had significant losses to their populations. Having someone be able to experience those birds firsthand and then now have information about
00:36:10
Speaker
their well-being that creates agency for a human to take interest and put effort into conservation, the decisions that are happening in their communities, right? If you say, well, you know, this open green space that we had, you know, we normally have these big flocks of crackles and someone comes in and it's like, oh yeah, we're going to build a bunch of townhomes.
00:36:30
Speaker
Now you have some agency over. No, I don't, I don't want that to happen to my grackle homies, right? And you can at least be able to speak up from a point of connection with the environment that you're in. So yeah, man, I don't know if we did a justice explaining to people why birding, but I think we, we did our best.
00:36:46
Speaker
There are so many reasons beyond being an amazing hobby, recreation, the mental, physical health benefits, community, the window into the wonder. There are a lot of reasons. And hopefully, hopefully if you're hearing our voice today, you're going to start to pay attention.
00:37:07
Speaker
And if you're paying attention, you're birding. That's right. That is right. Should we? But you had a fun one. Yeah, man. A fun one. Is there anything coming up, you know, that you're excited about? You know, I was thinking about, bro, like literally last night I go outside, I take my dog out late just before bed to just, you know, let them do his thing. And I heard pink.
00:37:30
Speaker
paint. And I was like, that's a, that's a temple. That's an American Woodcock. And I was like, come on, let's walk this way. And it was me, me. I was like, Oh my God, the Woodcocks are back. So I'm pretty excited about that. And yeah, actually are doing a Woodcock walk. We do one every year with our club. We're in a unique place where like,
00:37:51
Speaker
We get them, you know, and this is where they come to do their skydances and stuff. So I'm super excited about that. I heard my first beep, beep, beep last night. So I'm super excited. That's so amazing, man. We have a whole budding community over here of people that really, really, really love the American Woodcock for multiple reasons. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I posted a video on my Instagram. Yeah, you did recently. Yeah. Yeah. The dog on the little one.
00:38:21
Speaker
how to dance. So yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're out there, just go look up American Woodcock. You will see the most chunky, perfect, long build dopey looking bird. They're so goofy looking, but so amazing, right? They really are.
American Woodcocks and Upcoming Events
00:38:38
Speaker
And they're really a treat because they only come through for at least for us in PA, um, Southeastern PA for a few weeks in March when they're migrating and they're not
00:38:46
Speaker
They're not very intent migratory birds. They like to loaf. So they'll stay in the same spot for a little bit night after night and do their display flight. So yeah, man, I'm looking forward to just getting, you know, the spring going and getting out with the bird homies and the weather and just, you know, that first moment coming across a species that I forgot existed. I don't think
00:39:10
Speaker
talked about that last week. So like, you know, just what is that going to be? I'm looking forward to the, you know, the early migrants that get up here just a little bit too early and they hang around for a while or some vagrants that, you know, instead of going north, south, they go east, west, show up here. We always get some weird ones in the spring. So yeah, man, that's that's really what I'm looking forward to coming up soon.
00:39:33
Speaker
Love it. Love it.
Closing and Listener Engagement
00:39:35
Speaker
Want to thank everybody for joining us today on the Bird Joy podcast. We hope you enjoyed exploring the world of birding with us. Shout out to my homies, the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin. Check us out. Like I said, we got our Woodcock walks coming up. We got a lot of stuff going on in the spring. You can see what we're up to at BIPOC Birding Club.org. And until next time, my bird nerd homies,
00:39:59
Speaker
Shout out to In Color Birding Club. We have a slate of things coming up this spring and summer. If you want to know more, you're in the Philly area. Incolorbirding.org. Check us out. Please share, subscribe, and shout out our pod to your fellow birders. Help us spread a little bird joy. It's been one, bro. All right, brother. Peace. Peace.