(bright music)
Welcome to "Hadley Presents."
I'm your host, Ricky Enger, inviting you to sit back,
relax, and enjoy a conversation with the experts.
In this episode, founder of Access Birding, Freya McGregor,
joins us to discuss enjoying this hobby
with blindness or low vision.
Welcome to the show, Freya.
Thanks so much. It's great to be here.
It's really good to have you.
This has been an often-requested topic,
and it's not quite spring here yet,
but I do still occasionally hear birds chirping,
and it's always such a lovely sound,
and I really look forward to learning a bit more
about this hobby, 'cause I'll confess, I don't know a lot.
I have a lot of questions, but before we get into those,
why don't you just take a moment to tell us
a bit about yourself, who you are and what you do?
Sure, I am an occupational therapist.
My background is in blindness and low-vision services
back home in Australia,
but I fell in love with an American soldier,
and so I've lived in the US for the last seven years.
And I am really, real interested
as a disabled birder myself and an occupational therapist,
I'm really interested in helping to increase
the accessibility of birding spaces,
like trails and parks and observation buildings
and things like that and birding programs
and helping to create a more welcoming
and inclusive birding community
so that more disabled birders can get out
and be part of this lovely community
and enjoy this really cool hobby.
So I run a consulting business, Access Birding,
working with nature organizations
to increase access and inclusion for disabled birders.
And I am a research associate at Virginia Tech
working on projects related to access,
inclusion, disability, birding,
and using birding as a therapeutic tool,
which is really cool.
And I'm working on a book right now that will be published
by Princeton University Press in a couple of years
about accessible birding locations all over the US.
So that's a pretty gigantic project. (laughs)
Yeah, I'm trying to visit all the places that I include
because a big barrier to lots of disabled birders
is having access to the information that they need
to determine if a trail or a car birding location
is one that would be accessible to them.
So I'm trying to visit all these places,
which makes for lots of awesome birding travel,
but it's still a pretty monster project.
Right, (laughs) I love that you keep
mentioning access
and inclusion because it is incredibly important.
And I think when people imagine birding,
they have this idea of what it is
that's, you know, probably not accurate,
'cause I've even heard people call this
bird watching before, and so immediately I'm thinking
as a person who's blind myself,
I'm like, "Eh, that's probably not for me."
And so for somebody who doesn't have much vision,
surely there's more to birding
than just looking at pretty creatures.
So can you talk a little about maybe just a better way
to look at this that's more inclusive?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm actually really passionate about this.
In the birding community, there has historically been
a bit of a distinction between, quote,
bird watching and birding.
Birding was a new sort of term.
Some folks really enjoy keeping a life list,
which is a list of how many birds you've seen or heard
in your whole life, and many people keep lists.
Like, they might have a yard list of all the birds
that have shown up in their backyard,
or people keep checklists for what they've seen or heard
just on a particular trail today.
But so there was this difference between birding,
which was sort of this listing,
sort of almost competitive kind of thing,
and bird watching was seen as a sort of more relaxed,
casual, you know, feeding birds in your backyard
and just not like really worrying too much about it.
But loads and loads of people bird by ear.
Most sighted birders bird by ear to some extent.
So different birds make different sounds, and you can tell,
if you learn the sounds, you can tell what bird
is making which sound.
And some species even look exactly the same,
like really almost impossible
to visually identify which is which.
But the sounds they make,
that's the thing that tells you which one it is.
So birding by ear is completely standard. (laughs)
You know, like, it's not an extra thing.
It's just part of learning how to identify birds.
And so yeah, I'm really passionate about redefining birding
as the act of enjoying wild birds,
because some people might not think
they could be a bird watcher, but you can totally be
a bird enjoyer. (laughs)
Right, (laughs) so I guess if somebody's
thinking about this and they're like,
"I like the sounds of birds,
but I don't know which bird is which,
and I have no idea how to tell the difference
between all these birds,
or I don't even know how to get started with this.
It sounds cool, but where do I even go?"
Are there just some beginner resources,
whether it's a book, you know, a website,
or somewhere that people can start diving in
in a way that's not super intimidating?
Yeah, absolutely, so the recommendation is to
get familiar
with the birds that are local to you in your backyard
or that hang around in your neighborhood,
because when you get familiar with those birds,
then you start noticing a difference.
When you go to a different park or you go to a lake
or the beach or the mountains, you'll start,
different birds live in different habitats,
and different birds live in different parts
of the country and the world.
And because you're familiar with the ones close by,
you'll tell really quickly when there's a difference.
There are lots of different tools.
There's a really great app that's free.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology created it,
which is at Cornell University in Upstate New York,
a really big bird research institution,
and this app is called Merlin Bird ID,
Merlin like the wizard, but in fact,
it's Merlin like a falcon,
which is a kind of raptor, like a small hawk.
And Merlin Bird ID, it has photos of birds
and descriptions and range maps.
There'll be a like text description, though,
of the bird's behavior.
It often helps if you can see what they're up to
or if someone's describing to you what the bird's doing
and colors and size and shape and things like that.
But the thing that's really cool about Merlin
is it also has sounds that the birds make.
So once you're in a species, like say, a northern cardinal,
a really common bird in the Eastern US
in lots of people's backyards,
you can navigate to the sound bit of the northern cardinal
kind of listing, and it'll have a series of recorded calls,
because some birds make quite a few noises,
and you can play them and listen.
Now, the good birding ethics says it's not really good
to play bird sounds really loudly outside
because you can distract birds from what they're doing,
which is usually resting or trying to find food
or nesting in the spring and summer.
And we don't wanna like distract them.
They might think that we're an intruder,
and they come just kind of defend their territory.
And we don't wanna do that
because they've got stuff to do.
So if you play a sound outside, turn your volume down a bit.
You know, hold your phone close to your ear or something.
But inside, go wild. (laughs)
And there's also a really awesome feature
that's just come out in the last few months on Merlin,
which is a sound ID feature,
and you start using the app, you start recording
the sounds around you, and it recognizes
what birds are calling, and it tells you what they are,
which is really a cool way to confirm
something that you suspected.
Like, "I think that's a pine warbler,
but let me just check." (laughs)
Merlin can kinda tell you.
It doesn't always get it all right,
and you know, there are frogs that sound like birds,
and squirrels make all kinds of noises,
and you can go chasing squirrels,
and it turns out it's a squirrel, not a bird.
So Merlin only does bird sounds at the moment.
So there might be sounds you're like,
"Why doesn't it tell me what this is?"
It doesn't recognize it yet.
It hasn't got all the biodiversity in there.
But that's a really cool, really, really cool tool.
Another fun little thing,
and this is something you can just Google,
there's lots of different mnemonics
for learning bird sounds.
So a mnemonic is like a rhyme or just a funny little phrase
that helps you remember something else.
So there's these mnemonics for different bird sounds.
So they say Carolina wrens are these little feisty birds,
they're in, again, the Eastern US.
They're often in backyards. They don't really mind humans.
They make a lot of noise.
That's a really good call to learn
if you're in the Eastern US.
They're loud, and they're super feisty,
and they also make a few different calls.
But one of them they say that the wren says,
"Tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle."
Oh, right.
Sometimes you have to use a bit of imagination,
but that's what they say.
And if you can learn that sort of, that little memory trick,
that mnemonic, then when you hear the bird,
you might be like, "Oh, hey, that's tea kettle.
That's the Caroline wren."
So there's a whole stack of different mnemonics.
I wouldn't Google it and try and learn them all off the bat
because (laughs) like, that's kind of overwhelming.
There's a lot, I'm sure.
But yeah, that's fun,
and I just learned a new one recently.
Tufted titmice, another really common backyard bird
in a lot of the Eastern US, they're also small
and make a lot of noises.
And I hadn't realized that a sound that I often hear
in my neighborhood was a tufted titmice
until I got out Merlin Bird ID
and it said that was a tufted titmice.
I thought, "Oh gosh, right."
Someone just two days later happened to tell me,
"Oh yeah, tufted titmice say, 'Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter.'"
Oh, wow!
That's exactly the sound I heard.
I just hadn't, you know,
there's always more to learn about birds,
and that's something that makes it a really cool hobby.
You can take it as far as you want, or not.
You can just enjoy them for the sake of enjoying them
and not worry about what they're called
because they don't care what you call them,
so make up your own name. (laughs)
That's a really great point because I think,
at least for myself, when I think about birding,
it really does seem intimidating,
especially when I think about people
I have known who do this.
They have the binoculars and the camera,
and they have this field guide and this logbook
so they can, you know, jot down what they've found.
And it's like this whole thing of, "Wow, it is a process,
and I better get out there and do it right
if I'm gonna do it at all."
But that doesn't seem to be so accurate
from what you've described so far.
With that said, I'm wondering if there is equipment
or anything that you would recommend if somebody is birding.
Are there things that can help, either with, I don't know,
recording bird sounds or taking things down,
or just something that might make it a little bit easier
if you had any particular equipment?
Sure, before I dive into the equipment,
I just want to encourage you that because there are so many
different ways to enjoy wild birds,
like, none of them are more or less better than the other.
And so if you wanna just go out and listen
and it doesn't bother you that you don't know
what the birds are called, I mean that's fine.
Like, do that. You don't have to have all the gear out.
You don't have to know all the birds' names.
You don't have to travel interstate or overseas.
You just do whatever you want.
Like, birds are there, and they're awesome,
and you can enjoy them however you like.
So please don't feel intimidated.
We'd rather have you enjoy birds however you want
than feel like you can't be part of this hobby.
Equipment, yeah, a lot of folks use binoculars
because they magnify the birds,
so you can see the bird in more detail.
When you're trying to identify birds visually,
some birds have little, they're called field marks,
like different colors in different spots.
Maybe their beak is a little bit different shaped.
And so binoculars make everything look a bit bigger.
So they're a helpful tool, absolutely.
But they're just a tool. They're not required.
Cameras, yeah, sure,
some people really enjoy bird photography,
again, not required.
Just fun if that's a thing you wanna do.
I know some folks with low vision really like
being able to take photos of birds
because they can come home and put the photos
on their computer and sort of zoom in
and really, they can see more detail about the bird
than they could when they were out in the field.
So for them, that's really exciting
and something they really like to do.
I mean, I have a camera,
but that's 'cause I enjoy photography.
And I don't take it out all the time,
because sometimes I don't wanna lug
this giant heavy object around.
There's lots of folks who really enjoy
recording bird sounds,
and there's lots of different microphones
that could be used out in the field.
I happen to work for a radio show and podcast
about birds and conservation as well, and I use my phone.
We have this thing called audio postcards.
And so if I'm hearing a bird sort of making consistent noise
and there's not too much background noise,
like a big road nearby and trucks roaring up and down,
I use the voice recorder, the voice memo app on my phone,
and I just start recording right there.
And these days, like, phone microphones are pretty great.
And the show, "Talkin' Birds," by the way, there's a plug,
it's a half an hour radio show, it's released as a podcast,
and Ray Brown, the host, he's been doing this
for a long time.
He's been in radio longer than I've possibly been alive.
(laughs) But it's a really, that's actually a fun tool,
because he has a really great way of sharing information
about birds that's interesting to people
who have been doing it for a while
as well as not being too overwhelming
or intimidating for new birders.
So "Talkin' Birds," there's no G.
Anyhow, you might hear my voice if you listen
because I send in audio postcards quite often
just using my phone,
and I'll talk about what the bird's doing and where I am.
And you can upload, there's this really amazing
database called Xeno Canto.
It's X-E-N-O C-A-N-T-O, and I'm not sure
if it's for all kinds of nature sounds
or if it's just for birds,
but you can upload audio recordings there
and sort of make them publicly available.
And the other place, and this is sort of a tool, too,
eBird, is this massive database.
Again, the Cornel Lab of Ornithology run it,
and that's where people can submit checklists
of birds they've seen or heard
in a particular location on a day.
And you can upload photos and audio there as well,
and so there's this incredibly extensive library
of audio recordings that anyone can access through ebird.org
and hear all the different sounds that birds make.
That can get a bit overwhelming.
That's why I'd use the app instead,
'cause they've selected like the best-quality audio.
But it's kind of fun because a lot of folks
enjoy that sort of citizen science.
Like, you know, you're part of these incredible
research projects just by sharing data
about what birds are around you and the audio and stuff,
so that's kind of a fun thing, too.
Oh, for sure, and I think our show notes
are going to be packed full of these resources,
which is amazing.
It's great to know that there is so much out there,
and it's just in your describing this,
I don't think anyone should feel limited
because there are so many different ways to enjoy birds,
record them, do whatever
or just, "Hey, I just like to listen,
and that's as far as I wanna take it," so that's awesome.
For a lot of people, they live in an urban setting.
Maybe they're in an apartment complex
and there's not really a backyard
or you know, something nearby,
but they still want to be able to enjoy this.
Travel might actually be a little bit difficult.
But I mean, I feel like birds are everywhere.
So are there ways that people,
regardless of where they happen to be,
can still step outside, and enjoy birding?
Absolutely, yeah, that's one of the cool things
about birds is that they're everywhere, everywhere,
very much in urban settings.
There's a species of bird called a peregrine falcon,
and unusually, it's found on every continent
on the planet except Antarctica.
So there are peregrine falcons back home in Australia.
There's peregrine falcons in the US.
They became really endangered in the 1970s,
I think, when DDT was this pesticide
that was used in a lot of farming,
and it turned out that it would get in the food chain.
And so a peregrine falcon eats lots of prey,
lots of smaller birds and other things,
and it would sort of, this pesticide,
the kind of toxic part of it, would get in the food chain
and just king of build up and build up.
So by the time a falcon is eating it,
they're consuming way-high quantities.
And peregrine falcons, bald eagles,
I think American white pelicans and osprey,
they're all big birds that ate lots of smaller things.
And it turned out DDT, when they laid eggs,
it made the eggshells really thin,
and the parents, completely unknowingly,
would crack the eggshells
just by sitting on them in the nest.
And so it doesn't take very long
when you have a bunch of birds
who aren't having successful babies
because their eggshells are being cracked,
the babies aren't hatching,
all these birds became really endangered,
and it was really, really bad.
And then they banned DDT, and all of these birds
have made a huge comeback, which is really, really cool.
But peregrine falcons, so they're special for that reason,
but they really like nesting on cliffs
where there's like a straight, like, straight down,
like this big epic cliff.
And it turns out that skyscrapers sort of pass as cliffs
because they're really tall and like straight up and down.
They sort of, in big cities like, you know,
New York and Chicago and things, they make sort of canyons.
You know, there are so many skyscrapers in downtown
that there's almost a canyon of like where the street is.
And so there's all these places, these big, big cities
where there are peregrine falcons
nesting up high on these tall buildings.
And even in Melbourne, where I'm from back in Australia,
there's peregrine falcons
on actually a few of the downtown buildings,
and they have nest cams.
So they have a camera set up watching the nest.
There's one in Boston, too.
There's a nest cam on some peregrine falcons.
And that's a really fun way
to enjoy birds from your computer
cause you can just open the YouTube streaming,
I think it often is, the nest cam,
and you can see what's going on.
And because these birds are raptors,
they have to kind of baby their babies for quite a while.
So you get weeks of watching the little nestlings grow up
and get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger
before they kind of fledge and graduate out into the world.
So yeah, so peregrine falcons, it also turns out,
particularly in New York, so I hear,
there are so many pigeons.
Oh, right.
They're like super easy prey.
And pigeons are a common urban bird all over the world,
and peregrine falcons really like eating them, so.
(both laughing)
All of this to say that there are absolutely
birds everywhere, even in places
that you wouldn't necessarily think.
If you can, if there's a local park or green space nearby,
there's probably going to be more and different birds
in that more natural space, especially if there's water,
because birds need plants, because that's where insects are,
and that's food for a lot of bird species.
So you know, parks are really great and urban parks.
But even in really intense downtown areas, there are birds.
Tune in and listen out and look up if you can,
and you never know what you'll run into.
That's very cool.
We've talked a lot about doing this
sort of on your own as a solitary thing,
which is perfectly fine.
You know, You're not having to organize
something with somebody else.
But I am wondering if there are some benefits
to enjoying this as part of a group,
and how do people actually go about finding somebody
or a group of people who are into this hobby as well?
Yeah, absolutely, so a really cool thing in
the US,
there is the National Audubon Society,
which is a really big bird and conservation organization,
and there are more than 400 Audubon chapters
all over the US, different Audubon chapters
of different sizes, but they often
are running bird walks, bird outings,
birding events, workshops online,
presentations advertised on social media
or on their website or in their newsletter,
and beginners are almost always very, very, very welcome.
I've never seen something
that said beginners are not welcome.
Sometimes they'll have a beginner bird walk
like specifically to start folks out,
and they'll on purpose not get too carried away
and get too overwhelming with information
because there is so much to learn about birds.
But yeah, so Audubon societies, Audubon chapters.
There's lots of bird clubs as well, local bird clubs,
and nature centers and state parks and things
often they'll have programs, education,
interpretive programs, which are about birds
or going out, you know, on a bird hike or something.
So there's loads of ways to get involved
in the in-person birding community, and it's really fun.
You don't have to.
Plenty of people would rather go birding
on their own or just with one friend
or a couple of friends or whatever.
But yeah, going on organized bird outings is really fun.
I would encourage you, so I've done a lot of work
to help educate non-disabled members
of the birding community about how to be more welcoming
and inclusive of folks who might have
different access challenges.
But I would encourage you,
if you're blind or have low vision and you're going,
you really wanna go out on a bird outing,
I'm sure it's not required at all,
but it might be helpful to like email ahead of time
and see if you can get in touch with the outing leader
and just let them know that you're coming,
and you know, there's nothing that they have to worry about.
But just a heads-up, if they could help point out
more birds that are making sounds
than just the ones that you can see,
you know, that might help the outing leader
just make the event more enjoyable for you.
Excellent, and I think if you're telling a group
ahead of time or a leader ahead of time,
"Hey, I'm gonna be here,"
it will at least give them an opportunity
to think about birding in a way
that maybe they don't all the time already.
And so it could be beneficial for both of you.
Maybe they think about, "This is really visual for me,
and of course I do hear birds,
but I don't pay attention to it as much as I could."
and maybe just having that as a part of the group,
everyone is focused on listening as well as looking.
I think it's a way that can bring people together
and everybody benefits.
Yeah, absolutely, and sometimes for
sighted birders,
birding by ear feels like an advanced skill. (laughs)
and they might know a few calls,
but I'm sort of new in this category.
You know, I'm very proud
that I'm slowly getting more like competent
at identifying different birds by ear,
but it's not something that's come as easy to me
as identifying them visually.
So lots and lots of birders want to improve
their birding-by-ear skills
for exactly the reasons that I just shared.
And so there'll often be outings that are organized,
that are workshops that are focusing on birding by ear.
And so especially if you said
like, "Hey, it'd be really great if you can make sure
to kind of try and point out the calls as much for me,"
the outing leader might really appreciate that opportunity
to stretch their brain out a bit
and stretch everybody else's brain out a bit, too,
for sure, yeah.
Very cool, well, this has turned out to be
a far less intimidating and far more approachable hobby
than I ever imagined, which is really, really great,
and I know that the audience is going to enjoy this as well.
We have some people who are birding already
and some who are very curious about it
and just weren't quite sure where to begin.
So this has been really informative.
Is there anything that we didn't cover,
or any maybe just a bit of advice
that you would leave people with as we wrap up?
Yeah, backyard birding is a whole thing,
and feeding birds, you know, lots and lots of people,
they might not think that they're a birder,
but a lot of people feed birds in their backyard,
and that's awesome and a great way
to tune into the birds in your local area.
But yeah, there isn't a wrong way to do this.
So please go out.
We know there are so many therapeutic benefits to birding
like for our health and wellbeing, and bird sounds,
listening to bird sounds can help reduce stress
and a whole lot of other things.
So yeah, just, if you can, get outside.
Or if getting outside's hard,
tuning into a nest cam or a feeder cam.
There's lots and lots of them on the internet
that you'll probably be able to hear some awesome sounds.
And yeah, enjoy birds. It's so fun.
Love it, thank you so much.
And I can definitely hear the passion in your voice
as you talk about this, which is always good.
It's great to have someone who knows a lot about a subject
and is clearly just hoping to share that with other people.
So thank you so much for taking a bit of your time
and just sharing your expertise and your passion with us.
Yeah, you're welcome.
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(calm music)