Ornithology Club educates students through hosting workshops, travels to see rare birds

NC State’s Ornithology Club, also known as the “Bird Club,” is a new organization focused on the study of birds that aims to expose hobbyists and aspiring ornithologists to workshops hosted by professionals and regular birding trips.

Martina Nordstrand, a fourth-year studying fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology, started the club in September 2022 after being the president of the Leopold Wildlife Club the previous year.

“I decided instead of running for an officer position in that club, I [would] just start the Ornithology Club, and it’s been a lot more successful than I thought,” Nordstrand said.

Nordstrand said the club has over 80 members, with most of the club being made up of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology majors and zoology majors, although all students with an interest in birds are encouraged to join the club. She said birding is approachable because of how accessible, yet expansive the field is.

“Birds specifically stood out to me because they’re just so easy to find,” Nordstrand said. “It’s one of those things where you can keep diving as deep as you can, and you cannot find the bottom — you’re always constantly learning things.”

The club regularly hosts workshops with professors and local experts. Nordstrand said the club recently coordinated with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences to take a tour of their bird collection.

Emma Litra, a fourth-year studying fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology, said the club most recently hosted a tagging workshop with the Wildlife Club and Christopher Moorman, associate head and professor of forestry and environmental resources. Using a thin net, students caught and recorded the weights of birds by hand, even finding some birds that had been tagged the year before.

“Getting to handle a bird is like a different level,” Litra said. “It’s much more intimate to have something in your hands and look at it on that really fine detail level rather than through a scope or binoculars.”

Gabby Landry, a fourth-year studying fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology, said she first joined Ornithology Club because of her moderate interest in birding. She said Nordstrand has acted as a mentor for her and other members of the club, teaching them the basics and connecting them with resources in the degree program.

“I’ve learned a lot from her,” Landry said. “She’s mentored me to become a better birder and the Ornithology Club has helped my understanding of the hobby and the science.”

Landry said birding has opened her eyes to the wealth of wildlife found on campus. She said being able to recognize calls and species of birds contributes to the quality of her day.

“Being able to walk to class and hear the little ‘peep’ from a yellow-rumped warbler, which are always everywhere … and like, they come really close to you because they’re really tame — that really makes my day,” Landry said. “If I see a bird, I’m just like, ‘OK, this is something good. There’s animals here.’”

The club makes day trips to birding locations across the state. Nordstrand said her most memorable trip was to the Blue Ridge Parkway in September to view the migrating broad-winged hawks.

“It was really tricky to plan because it’s so dependent on the weather,” Nordstrand said.

“[If there are] bad winds, you might not see anything. So we had four hundred hawks, which was really awesome. Hawk-watching is really chill. It’s like what you do on Stafford commons, you just kind of sit back and watch them fly over.”

Being outdoors exposes the Ornithology Club to other wildlife. Nordstrand said while on their trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway, they also came across a timber rattlesnake den and found a rare milk snake.

Nordstrand said the club most recently witnessed its rarest bird, a red-footed booby, at Yates Mill. She said what makes this sighting so strange is that the bird is native to the equatorial tropics and instead of being around a larger body of water, like Jordan Lake, the bird decided to stay a short distance from campus. This was the second recorded sighting of a red-footed booby in the state, the first being spotted off the coast from a cruise ship.

“I was like, ‘There’s no way that’s real,’” Nordstrand said. “It was just [at] a random little pond in the middle of Wake County, like five miles down from downtown Raleigh. There weren’t really any major weather events that could have pushed it. It just showed up and this was a second state record.”

Nordstrand said she is regularly asked to identify birds on campus, the most iconic being the red-tailed hawks, which are mostly spotted in the Court of North Carolina, Miller Fields and the Brickyard. She said a red-tailed hawk couple is often spotted atop the Spire.

Nordstrand, Litra and Landry said other common birds seen on campus are robins, kinglets, cardinals, finches, waxwings, east- ern towhees and white-throated sparrows. The club uses the eBird app to log their sightings of birds and contribute to scientific research. Nordstrand said she recommends the app, as it allows birders to find areas to find specific birds in, as well as contributes to data that researchers use to make decisions about the conservation and management of wildlife.

Nordstrand said the club is assisting Jin Bai, a graduate student in fisheries, wildlife and conservation, with research for his nonprofit, City Bird. City Bird is a collaborative effort between NC State and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students to collect data on bird-building collisions in hopes of convincing policymakers and landowners to design buildings with the safety of birds in mind.

More information can be found on the Ornithology Club’s Instagram page, @ncsu.birdclub