How Tweet It Is

OUT GET !

COVID-19 brought about a great deal of change to the way humans operated over last two years. We locked ourselves away for days, weeks, and months at a time, becoming more reliant on our digital screens than ever before.

Meetings, phone calls, work, reading, texing, shopping, social media – it all happens on a screen just inches away from our eyes. You may find yourself feeling distant from the physical world, longing for a warm breeze on your face or the itch to just Get Out!

Welcome to Southeast Ohio’s great outdoors! Southeast Ohio is perhaps best known for its nature spots and miles of sprawling hiking trails surrounded by luscious forests and unique wildlife. This feature package brings together stories that have to do with embracing and celebrating Southeast Ohio’s natural outdoor playground.

Calls of the Wild

Birding provides an escape through melodies in the trees

Story by LEXI POTOPSKY | Photos by CARRIE LEGG

Karen Mammone often finds herself outside, with her camera and binoculars, during her free time — just in case she gets a glimpse of a feathered beauty.

Birding in Southeast Ohio is a common activity. Between Wayne National Forest, Strouds Run State Park, Hocking Hills, Lake Snowden and so many more, there are a lot of hot spots to choose from.

Bird-watchers put different levels of time and energy into their hobby, with most of them starting small and progressively working up over time.

Mammone, a biology professor at Ohio University, is part of a local bird-watch group, the Athens Area Birders. Prior to the pandemic, the Athens Area Birders would hold educational seminars as well as locally led bird outings.

She has had a passion for bird-watching for around seven years now. She started small: As any new birder would do, she would look at birds in her backyard or go to local hot spots.

It wasn’t until she went to a festival right off Lake Erie, called The Biggest Week in American Birding, that her love and drive for birds skyrocketed.

“I went to this festival, and I got exposed to all these birds, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m hooked,’” Mammone says.

The Biggest Week in American Birding is usually at the beginning of May on the edge of Lake Erie in Northwest Ohio, just in time for spring migration. Migrating birds will stop to fuel up at the lake for a day or two.

“You’ll have a huge concentration of birds that you don’t usually see before they fly over,” Mammone says.

This event attracts a lot of avid bird-watchers across the state of Ohio in hopes that they will get to see new species and hear new songs.

Mammone says most people have a “spark bird,” or a bird that kickstarts their interest in birding. Often, birders will ask other birders what their spark bird is or which bird made them want to learn more about a certain species. As for her, she says she has a spark group: warblers. These bird species are small songbirds, bright and colorful with unique songs. “Even if you weren’t a birder, you would love it,” Mone says.

Warblers are one of the various types of birds whose distinct song can be heard before the bird is spotted. Some birders don’t necessarily go out looking for different birds but, instead, listen to the distinctive songs of each bird to identify them.

“When you actually get really into birding, you start birding by sound and sight. In fact, you can go out and, some days when you don’t see much, all of your birding might be by songs and calls,” Mammone says, adding it’s not always easy.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology tracks data to assist bird research and conservation efforts through an app called eBird. A lot of birders use it, too, by tracking the list of birds they see, sharing their list with other birders, connecting with birders all over, and viewing pictures and audio recordings of different birds to help identify them correctly.

This app can help birders in the same community keep each other up to date with what birds they heard or saw and also allows users to compete against one another to see who spots the most species.

Once a year, there is a Great Backyard Bird Count in which the challenge is to spot as many different species as they can and log them. The Great Backyard Bird Count celebrated its 25th anniversary of collecting data in February 2022.

Joe Brehm is the environmental education director at Rural Action and part of the Athens Area Birders. He and around 15 volunteers have put up 60 nest boxes around Athens and Hocking County, and some are placed on the Hockhocking Adena Bikeway. The nest boxes are set in place to attract the prothonotary warbler.

“I went to this festival, and I got exposed to all these birds, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m hooked.”

- Karen Mammone, Bird-watcher, Ohio University Biology Professor

ABOVE | A male Cardinal perched in tree brush.