Birding is a lifelong hobby, full of endless opportunities for learning, for personal growth, for new adventures. If you’ve taken up birding in 2020, you’ve likely discovered just how immensely rewarding it can be. You’ve probably also discovered just how little you know about birds.
Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. I’ve heard that feeling never goes away, no matter how much experience you gain. But that’s fine by me—who doesn’t love a hobby that keeps you on your toes, that challenges you, that pushes you to learn new things and practice new skills, that keeps you ever-curious about the wonders of birds?
As 2020 creeps to a close, it’s a good time to think about your relationship to birding and how it may evolve in the new year. How will you challenge yourself? What will you strive to learn? How will birding continue to expand your world? This week’s Entryway to Birding blog is here to help you brainstorm ideas for New Year’s resolutions you might make as you bird your way into 2021.
We are like the persistent brown creeper, spiraling up the tree bark of the twisted, knotty tree that is 2020. Soon we’ll fly to the bottom of the next tree and climb our way up that one too. A new year, a new tree, we creep on. Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt
New Year's Resolutions for …
… Changing How You Bird
One of my favorite things about birding is how endlessly adaptable it is. You can bird anywhere, anyway, anytime you want. You make the rules of this hobby for yourself; you adapt it to your lifestyle, your needs, your schedule. But if you’ve been birding 2020 in the same ol’ fashion all year round, think about how you might switch up the way you are birding. You might find it brings a new level of joy to a hobby that you thought couldn’t get any better.
Here are some ideas:
• Give green birding a go. If you’ve been struggling to justify the amount of time you spend driving in order to go birding, consider making a commitment to green birding. You’ll reduce your impact on the environment while also getting outside—walking, biking, hiking, canoeing, what have you!—and being physically active in the process.
Maybe you decide to do some green birding once or twice a week, or maybe you’ll go all out and do a Big Green Big Year, a.k.a. “a BIGBY,” a twist on the classic birding Big Year, and challenge yourself to see as many species as possible while green birding.
Did you know that the Wisconsin Society of Ornithology has been hosting a Green Birding Challenge for the past 10 years? Maybe your name will be next on the list of winners!
I fell in love with birding by bike this summer. The Glacial Drumlin bike trail, pictured here, was a personal favorite of mine. I learned I can bike it all the way to one of my favorite places, Zeloski Marsh in Jefferson County! Read more about some fun destinations for birding by bike here and get tips for birding by bike at Zeloski Marsh here. Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt
• Commit to more slow birding. When I think of all my birding mentors and what I admire most about their birding knowledge, it’s their patience and their commitment to slow birding. If you want to learn birds and learn them well, make time for going slow. You might find that you witness more unique bird behaviors, you get better views of birds to really learn their field marks, and you gain all the mental benefits that come with fully immersing yourself in the world around you.
Read more about the benefits of slow birding in one of our past blog posts, listen to the American Birding Assocation’s podcast on slow birding featuring Bridget Butler, the “Bird Diva,” who offers more resources on slow birding on her website.
… Using eBird
eBird is one of the world’s largest community science platforms, allowing birders all over the world to report their bird sightings. The resulting data is used by scientists studying migration patterns, bird density and population, bird conservation efforts, the effects of climate change, and so much more.
If you’ve been reading this blog throughout the last year, you know how much I love eBird. It’s an incredible resource for scientists, but it was also crafted with the birder in mind. There are so many tools and features you can use to improve your birding skills and challenge yourself at the same time.
Here are some resolutions to spur your 2021 eBirding:
• Join eBird, if you haven’t yet. Seriously, what are you waiting for? Let 2021 be the year you join the rest of the birding community on this incredible platform. Check out our “From New Birder to eBirder: 7 Reasons Why You Should Be On eBird” article from earlier this year and then learn how to get started here.
I made a goal to get outside and bird as often as I could, but sometimes that didn’t always happen. A portion of my checklists were submitted from the comfort of my second-story apartment, sneakily peering out my apartment window to the feeders at the complex across the parking lot. But hey—that’s birding too! Screenshot of my eBird stats from eBird.org
• Get a checklist streak going. When you log into eBird you’ll see your eBird stats and a “checklist streak” that will track how many days in a row you’ve submitted an eBird checklist. This is a great motivator to do some daily birding. I started a checklist streak just after Christmas last year (yeah, I was too excited to wait for the new year to get my resolution going!) and so, just the other day, I hit that magical 365-day streak. For me, that means that not a day went by in 2020 that I didn’t take even just a few minutes to stop and appreciate the wonder of birds.
• eBird some under-birded hotspots. eBird is a great tool for discovering new places to go birding. You can explore birding hotspots in your county and see popular destinations where many species have been reported. The top hotspots get lots of love, for good reason, but there are so many under-birded hotspots that just don’t get as many visitors or have many checklists submitted. Make a resolution to eBird those under-birded areas and bring up their species count. You could be the first person to find something new in that area—and those are bragging rights a birder dreams of!
Click here explore hotspots in Dane County. Notice the color system—those gray and blue hotspots don’t have as many species reported! Can you bring their numbers up? (Someone, please go bird Orton Park, stat! Yes, it’s a small park but I refuse to believe 10 species is all that can be found there.) Screenshot of eBird’s Hotspot Explorer
• Establish a “patch.” In birding lingo, a patch is an area that you bird frequently and have gotten to know really well. There’s no definitive guidelines on determining your patch. It’s yours—you make the rules. But there is a commonly used “five mile radius” patch, or 5MR, that many birders use to keep track of the birds they’ve seen within a five mile radius of their home.
This is a fun challenge that will help you discover new places to bird closer to home and help you track the diversity of bird species found within a few miles of your home! eBird has instructions for how to set up your patch list here, but they don’t have a tool (yet) to determine your 5 mile radius circle. Go here to figure out the boundaries of your patch, then add locations you bird within those boundaries to your patch list. How many species will you uncover in your patch next year?
(Update 12/29: It looks like this year, folks in Dane County are reigniting the Wisconsin Local Patch Challenge that got started in 2014. This patch challenge uses a 7.5 mile radius instead of a 5 mile radius, so consider making your patch a 7.5MR to see how your patch stacks up against other local birders. Learn more on the Dane County Notable Birds Facebook group.)
… Improving Your Identification Skills
I hate to break it to you, but all the finer points of warbler identification aren’t going to magically appear in your brain. Same goes for sparrows, and flycatchers, and gulls, and ducks, and … You get the point. Learning the ins and outs of bird identification takes time, patience, practice, and good ol’ effort. How will you refine your skills over the next year?
Here are some ideas:
• Read through a field guide, cover to cover. What? Don’t tell me I’m the only one who gets a new field guide, flips through it with excitement, then proceeds to let it collect dust on the shelf. You might find yourself referencing a field guide in the moments you need it, but there’s a lot you can learn and absorb from just sitting down and reading through it. Keep it on your nightstand and read about a few species each night—you might be surprised how much sticks with you!
I’ve talked about The Warbler Guide before. It’s a behemoth of a book, but what I have explored has been so incredibly helpful. I love all the photos that show me birds from every angle! I hope to make more progress with it in 2021. Photo of the Tennessee warbler page in The Warbler Guide
• Get a specialized guide to really hone your skills. It can be overwhelming to tackle all the intricacies of bird identification at once, so choose a family and focus on them. There are books on raptors, books on warblers, books on sparrows, books on waterfowl, books on every bird family you can imagine. Find one and study up.
• Improve your ear birding. I think this is something we all want to be better at. It’s one of my biggest weaknesses. I’ll tell myself that I “just don’t have the ear” for it, but I know the truth—I haven’t put in as much effort as I could. When you’re out there working on your slow birding resolution, shift your focus to bird noises. Spend time with one bird and try—if it will let you—to watch it as it vocalizes. The biggest thing that has helped me is seeing birds make their vocalizations; something about the visual helps the sound stick in my head.
If you can’t watch them in real time, you should know that the “Sounds” page for each species on Cornell’s All About Birds usually (not always) has a video of the bird vocalizing, like this sedge wren here. Another resource is the handy Larkwire app, which turns learning bird sounds into a clever matching game.
A sedge wren belts out a song at Cherokee Marsh. Getting a glimpse of this bird singing helped me remember it’s song. Listen to them here. Just looking at this has me excited for this spring when their songs will rattle through the marsh! Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt
… Expanding Your Birding-Adjacent Interests
It’s no secret that birding is a gateway drug. If you’ve picked up this hobby this year, I guarantee your curiosity has also been piqued by prairies, by wetlands, by bugs, herps, flowers, trees, mammals, or by the potential of photographing all of those things!
There’s a big wide, wonderful world out there. Maybe birding is what put you in the middle of it, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just birds, or just birding. This is a hobby perfectly attuned to the multitasker and the lifelong learner.
Here are a few ways you might get started:
An easy resolution to start with: photographing as many bird butts as you can. Here’s a black-capped chickadee showing me its rear-end. This is an angle you’ll see frequently the moment you pull out your camera, I guarantee it. It’s like they know I want to see their face! Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt
• Take up bird photography. Maybe your goal this year will be to start photographing your sightings so you can add pictures to your eBird checklists. Maybe it will be to learn how to take better pictures, or to photograph as many species as you can in 2021. Maybe your photography will be artistic, or maybe it will simply be an ID tool. I often take photos of birds I don’t know how to ID in the moment so I can study them and try to find them in my field guide—it’s helped me improve my identification skills a surprising amount!
• Join iNaturalist. I bet you’ve seen a lot of plants or bugs or reptiles that you don’t recognize while out birding. Post them on iNaturalist and get some identification help while also contributing to a massive database of plants, flowers, insects, herps, and more! You can also test out their “Seek” app and use your phone’s camera to ID species right in the moment.
• Get involved in wildlife and habitat conservation. I’ve visited a lot of new birding destinations over the last year that are managed by local non-profits, like our very own Madison Audubon, Groundswell Conservancy, The Prairie Enthusiasts, and more. The Madison area also has a wealth of “Friends of “ groups that support local conservation parks. Maybe 2021 is the year that you start volunteering with one of these groups and doing what you can to support the habitat that the birds you love rely on.
You might also consider becoming a member of these organizations, joining the Wisconsin Society of Ornithology, joining the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, or participating in the NRF’s Great Wisconsin Birdathon in the spring. Maybe you pitch in to support the future of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, which helps a number of local organizations protect Wisconsin’s resources. Whether you are donating your time or your money, there are endless ways you can learn more about the world of conservation and support birds in the process.
One of my resolutions for last year was to explore new hotspots, places that I simply hadn’t been before. I discovered what are now some of my favorite places and learned that around every corner, Wisconsin has more treasure waiting for you. And if you’re lucky, a double rainbow too. Photo by Caitlyn Schuchhardt
2020 has been an unprecedented year. A difficult, challenging, heartbreaking year. But it was also a year that many people—perhaps even you!—turned to the solace that nature can provide and discovered a connection that they might not have known before. For that, we can be grateful.
Whether or not you choose to set a New Year’s resolution, I hope that birding will be a mainstay in your 2021, in whatever form works best for you. Because life is better with birds—and 2021 will be better too.
Have a safe and happy new year, and I’ll see you next week!
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Caitlyn is the Communications and Outreach Assistant at Madison Audubon. She’s crazy for birds because they changed her life. She’ll be back next Monday with some tips and tools for birders, new and experienced! Between now and then, she’d love to hear about the birds you’re seeing and hearing. Leave a comment below or email to drop her a line!
