Birding is a great way to spend
time outdoors with friends or
family with little or no investment.
Oh, that bird always does that.
You don't have to drive
far from home to planned
birding trips. When we
don't get bird songs,
we're going to get bird calls.
And we asked Hikey James,
the president of the DC Audubon
Society, why he loves Birdie. To
me, it brought a sense of responsibility
to build trust, to build connection,
to build coalition, and to build power.
Because often when we're out burning,
we're seeing the conditions of the land
and we're connecting the history of the
habitat with the history of the community.
Birders not only use sight.
Ohh that flycatcher and sound.
To identify birds, they also use behavior.
Literally, what does the bird doing?
Is it just sitting there perched?
That's a behavior.
Is it jumping around in the tree?
That's a behavior.
Is it pumping its tail?
That's a behavior.
Is it messing with other birds?
That's a behavior.
And yes, there's an app for that.
Somebody posted the picture,
DC bird chatter, and they will share
very generously what birds they've seen,
where they've seen them.
And typically they'll add in a picture
in there just so you can be like, oh,
this is what it looks like as well.
Those sharpshin has like that wide open eye.
Most birders are very dedicated
to birding and are always on,
like Maria Elena Montero.
I always knew what birds were around me.
I grew up in Tacoma Park where there's a
lot of trees and a lot of backyard birds,
and I just became more curious about birds
that I wasn't seeing as regularly. Sometimes
there's a moment or a certain bird
that ignites your passion. There's
something that happens where
you can't get it off you.
Something turns on,
something sparks. Your interest.
We always call it a spark bird.
That's the bird that gets you into birding.
For me, it was a belted Kingfisher. The
Audubon Society will provide
you with binoculars. Now,
I brought my own and my trusty Petersons,
a field guide to birds book.
Do you know that there are 18
million birders in the United States?
It's not just your grandma doing it,
it's becoming pretty popular.
We're here in Northeast
DC we crossed this bridge.
We're in Heritage Island,
which is a man made island by the way.
Across another bridge.
That's Kingman island.
And we saw incredible birds today.
Great blue.
Parents, egrets,
a bunch of warblers.
What's weird is that we're
in the shadow of RFK.
I asked Hikey for his top three favorite
places to go birding in the district,
Kingman and Heritage Islands.
It's a really great City Park.
You get to see a lot of the river
as well as some dense forests.
So you can get a lot of mix of some
water birds and shore birds while
also getting warblers and wood.
Songbirds, big fan of Kenilworth
Aquatic Gardens and then Anacostia
Park by the river by the roller rink.
There's a bridge.
That you can get on,
and it gives you the ability to see
trees at the canopy level. Some
of my favorite spots in the
DMV include Huntley Meadows
just South of Alexandria and Virginia
Brookside Gardens in Wheaton,
MD, and now I'm a fan,
Kingman and Heritage Islands.
In DC we had quite a successful day.
White throated Sparrow,
song Sparrow, common grackle,
northern perula, blackpole,
blackpole warbler,
northern Cardinals.
You know, we ended up seeing
over 44 different types of birds
and before I got there they saw
a bald eagle over RFK, right.
So here's this is sort of interesting.
COVID actually created a boom in birding.
Now most parks were open and it
was a safe way to be outside and
socialize with friends and family.
And you know, I've been kind of
a border for awhile with Dad,
sort of got me interested in it.
Not crazy but you know,
able to identify 20-30 birds.
I didn't know this.
And Tiki told me that some birds
have different colors and fall
and spring and that's that makes
them even harder to identify.
Mention in detail.
Yeah, pretty cool.
Hang
out the bars in DC,
you'll see a lot of the colors
changing summer and winter as well.
But if you're looking at the birds out,
it's a good way to judge the
health of a local ecosystem too,
especially in an area where we end up
generally seeing more of the metal
birds with rotors than we do the
actual birds with feathers. Exactly.
It's a good way to check on, you know,
how your ecosystem is doing and you
know that those islands literally,
I mean we got metro and we've got
the RFK tremendous amount of.
You have to go far, no?
Yeah. Seeing those
images, it's hard to believe. That's NE DC,
NE DC. Gotta check it out.