The cottonwood trees around me seemed to shimmy with life. Maybe it was just a late spring breeze nudging its way through the overstory, but there was also a chance that some winged tenant was fidgeting in its nest on a nearby branch and causing the stir. I wasn’t sure. Still, I was curious enough to pick up a borrowed set of binoculars, fumble for the focus wheel, and take a closer look. Gazing skyward, I made out a faint feathered outline. What a thrill!
As much as I enjoyed the idea of exploring the outdoors and encountering wildlife, I hadn’t made much effort to do so before that Saturday morning in May, when I found my way to the shores of Jordanelle Reservoir east of Salt Lake City. I’d recently moved here from the East Coast, and wanted to familiarize myself with the people, places and experiences my new home had to offer. So, with no prior avian knowledge, I joined a free birdwatching event I saw advertised on social media. That’s how I learned that birding (or birdwatching, as it was once called) has become America’s sweetheart of pastimes.
Sadly, my first find didn’t exactly hold up. Upon closer examination, the subject looked like an ordinary barn swallow — about the most anticlimactic species an aspiring birder could possibly spot. These tiny, black and blue creatures are the most common type of swallow, spotted from my perch near the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah to the farthest recesses of the globe — even, on occasion, Antarctica. But I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know much of anything about birds. So I celebrated the discovery like any other. Because after all, it was a discovery, at least for me.
Birding is the mere act of looking at birds, whether through pricey binoculars or an eager set of eyes. It’s long been associated with older hobbyists — the stereotypical retiree in a khaki vest, with plenty of free time and disposable income. But each of the eight strangers who showed up to stare at birds that morning were in their 20s and 30s, including myself. We called out to each other when we spotted the circling silhouette of a red-tailed hawk and logged our sightings in physical or digital field diaries. We oohed and aahed at the majestic hover of an osprey as it stalked its meal over the Provo River, whipping out our iPhones to take photos.
Since the earliest dawn of human civilization, birds have been important for us spiritually and emotionally.
Technology has made it easier than ever to get into birding, which has attracted millennials and zoomers alike. Hashtags like #birdwatching and #birding have garnered hundreds of thousands of posts and billions of views on TikTok. The rate of young adults who watch any kind of wildlife has tripled within the last decade, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Now about a third of all Americans over 16 watch birds. “They’re accessible and interesting to us intellectually,” says John Fitzpatrick, director emeritus of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We love to count them. We love to keep lists about them. Since the earliest dawn of human civilization, they’ve been very important for us spiritually and emotionally as well.”
When and where it started
Edmund Selous crouched in hiding and stared at the object in front of him. The British ornithologist knew, to some degree, that the brown blob that had captured his interest was a pair of incubating birds — yet it took him more than an hour to distinguish them from a lump of tree bark. He could have killed the specimens to study them at closer range, as was customary for bird enthusiasts before the 20th century. Instead, on that fateful night in 1898, he chose to watch under the cover of night.
The camouflaged creatures were European nightjars, nocturnal birds with mottled plumage, large dark eyes and wide, almost reptilian mouths. Selous excitedly jotted notes in his field journal, describing their behaviors in detail. He found that the act of watching birds felt more rewarding than hunting them, and offered more opportunities for intelligent analysis. He made that case later in his book “Bird Watching,” published in 1901. “The pleasure that belongs to observation and inference is, really, far greater than that which attends any kind of skill or dexterity,” he wrote, “even when death and pain add their zest to the latter.”
Selous’ approach changed how scientists approached birdwatching, and shaped how the general public chose to interact with birds when binoculars became widely available in the 20th century. But the instinct to bear witness to these animals has existed for much longer. Red ochre paintings at Tajo de Las Figuras, a cave in southern Spain, depict hundreds of birds dating to the neolithic period. In ancient Egypt, the ibis was the sacred bird of Thoth, god of wisdom, and 10,000 birds were sacrificed and mummified each year beginning around 600 B.C. with the intention of procuring health, long life or romance.
As of 2022, 96 million Americans were birding — more than the populations of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain or Canada. In 2022, they spent $107.6 billion on equipment and birdwatching trips, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There are at least 150 chapters of Audubon clubs on college campuses, while groups like Feminist Bird Club and Flock Together focus on supporting people from marginalized communities who want to get outdoors. “You could make a pretty strong argument that birding is the most accessible form of outdoor recreation,” says Alli Smith, project coordinator at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “because birds are everywhere.”
Covid and the revival
Two years after my first attempt at birding, I still don’t own my own binoculars or a single field guide, but I do borrow some lessons from the experience. I’ve learned to identify black-billed magpies by the squawk they make when looking for trouble in my backyard. I’ve learned to spot American robins from afar; they’re friendly and curious, and even seem to draw closer when I call out to them. These are common birds I see around my home, yet they make me feel like I’m in on some big cosmic secret of the natural world — or, at the very least, like I know my neighbors.
Outdoor recreation often presents large barriers to entry. Mountain biking requires daunting levels of technical skill; skiing calls for years of practice and decent health insurance; and don’t get me started on horseback riding. Sports like these can be costly and physically demanding, specific to certain regions and reliant on specialized gear. Birds, on the other hand, exist everywhere, from rural towns to major cities, year-round and all day. There are an estimated 50 billion wild birds worldwide — about six for every human being. And the advent of technology has made it easier than ever to find them.
Recognizing common birds I see around my home makes me feel like I’m in on a big cosmic secret — or at least like I know my neighbors.
“BirdNote Daily,” a two-minute radio show that broadcasts bird sounds and stories, is one of the country’s most popular programs. It reaches more than 8 million people each week via hundreds of stations and the sponsoring organization’s website, birdnote.org, helping birders learn more about different species and familiarize themselves with calls. Apps like Merlin Bird ID let users record sounds, snap photos or log traits to identify birds in real time. This app boasts 25 million downloads in its 11 years, but most took place within the last four years.
One catalyst was the Covid-19 lockdown, which led bored adults and children to find ways to spend time outdoors, where they could interact with less risk of contagion. An early example was Pokémon Go, a phone-based game that overlaid a virtual hunt for digital creatures onto real landscapes, which drew groups — and sometimes mobs — of players to parks and plazas where exotic targets tended to appear. Maybe that search for fantasy beings in their towns and cities inspired young people to seek out real-life animals in the state of nature.
Gen Z generally wants to spend more time outdoors, experiences higher rates of anxiety about the effects of climate change, and reports concern for the environment and animals. Birding not only mirrors those concerns and interests, it helps alleviate any associated stress. “It’s really important, because it gives you a firsthand knowledge of what’s going on in the world,” says Geoffrey Hill, professor of ornithology and curator of birds at Auburn University’s Hill Lab. “If you get out a lot, you have a pretty good impression of the world. You see, is it ruined? Is it untouched? It’s neither ruined nor untouched, it’s somewhere in between.”
Perhaps they’re also finding that birding helps them to feel better. Younger Americans’ struggles with mental health are well documented. One study published in Nature in 2022 found that participants who saw or heard birds had improved mental well-being that lingered for hours. Another Nature study that year found that listening to short audio clips of birdsong decreased feelings of anxiety, depression and paranoia. And last year, the Journal of Environmental Psychology published a study where university-aged participants found that nature walks with birdwatching were more effective at reducing stress than nature walks without birds.
“When we take the time to slow down and notice what’s around us, we become more mindful,” says Holly Merker, co-author of “Ornitherapy: For Your Mind, Body, and Soul,” a book that advocates birding as a path to wellness. “The stress in our lives starts to fade away. It starts to blur in the background.”
Appreciating what surrounds us
Every afternoon, when the traffic quiets down a bit, I go sit on my porch for a breath of fresh air. That’s usually when the trees in my front yard fill with swallows. They zip by in packs, bouncing from tree to tree then shrub to shrub, ripping off little black chokeberries before buzzing off to some other undisclosed location.
Now that I recognize their general shape, I can’t help but think back to the swallow I saw at Jordanelle State Park. The tiny body backed by a forked tail. I’d seen this bird probably hundreds of times before in my life, but I’d never had a name for it. I guess I’d never really seen it at all.
It’s easy to take birds for granted. I’ve spent the majority of my life glancing past swallows, and every one of their avian relatives. Birding broke through that blur for me. But, more importantly, it shattered my assumption that birds are a given — that there will always be plenty around. Three billion birds have disappeared from the United States and Canada since 1970 — one-third of their population. Imagine losing 2.7 billion people in one lifetime.
Many birds are indicator species, which means that studying birds can tip off humans to environmental issues — the canary in the coal mine, writ large. Birds are essential to our ecosystems. They scatter seeds, build habitat, contribute to pollination, perform pest and weed control, and even remove dead carcasses from the landscape. No wonder one study found that birders are four or five times more likely to engage in conservation efforts.
The new birders are also the first Americans who can’t take the future of birds, nature or the rest of their environment for granted.
“It doesn’t take much experience out there in the wild to realize that the nature of the environment matters a ton as to how many and which kinds of birds you see. So that starts to get us thinking about the environment as a place that’s pretty important for these things,” Fitzpatrick says. “This connection between birding and environmental protection is enormously important.”
That certainly appeals to my generation. The new birders who seem to be turning this age-old hobby on its head are also the first Americans who can’t take the future of birds, nature or the rest of their environment for granted. Now, when I see another swallow or otherwise ordinary bird, I make sure to hold my gaze a bit longer. I take in the sight for as long as it’ll last.
This story appears in the May 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe..