The Great Outdoors: Pt. 3

How to Begin Birdwatching

BY HANNAH HERNER

As we stay at home, birds get to go on with their lives outside the home office window, blissfully unaware of what is going on in the world. It’s an opportune time to move beyond just looking at birds, and start bird watching.

For the third and final part of this series on getting outside during the pandemic, we talked to Sandy Bivens, staff member at the Warner Parks bird research program, about how to get started in bird watching.

As it turns out, going to walk on greenways presents a great opportunity for bird watching, and planting native plants in your yard helps bring more birds to you. (Read the previous installments of this series to learn more about these topics.)

Warner Park Nature Center is host to a bunch of bird research projects throughout the year. Biven and her team of trained volunteers catch the birds in nets that resemble hairnets and put little bands on their legs so they can keep record of where they’re born, how long they live, where they go and what routes they take. Bivens recommends a free app eBird, to help beginners identify birds.

In a normal spring, Warner Park invites people to observe this banding process, and hosts lots of bird programs for all ages, from school field trips to guided bird hikes. In the meantime, one can start learning about birds in their own backyard.

Is there a bird that you’re particularly fascinated with?

I guess I’m particularly fascinated with bluebirds and hummingbirds. Warblers, too. One that we catch every year is the Kentucky warbler, and that’s a special bird that we look forward to. It nests on the ground, it’s small, it’s bright yellow and has black around the face — it’s beautiful. The wood thrush is another one that we have lots of records of. It has the most beautiful flute-like song. You don’t always see them — they’re camouflaged pretty well — but if you walk in Warner Park in the summer you can hear it. And it sings all day long even if it’s 90 degrees and miserable.

I’m especially interested in the song, too. I think people like birds because they’re colorful, because they fly, and because they’re so available to see in your own backyard. In the spring they’re all singing at once. But once you learn one, and you get another, and another, it gets easier to pick them out. In the fall and winter they’re not singing like they are in the spring. This is peak time. But any day is a good day to start.

What are some good places to bird watch?

Warner Parks is especially known for having a lot of species. There are different habitats and it’s a large natural area. Radnor Lake State Park may be the most famous in Nashville for birding because it’s got the lake and that attracts more species. Shelby Bottoms is also really good, Bells Bend Park has a different habitat, and Beaman Park has woods and the plateau, so it has different species, too.

What should I do to attract more birds to my yard?

The first thing to do is to look for how many different kinds you can see, what’s already there. You might be amazed at what’s in your own yard. In migration, a lot of those birds migrate at night. When you wake up you have no idea what could have landed to spend the day there, eating and storing up more fats so it can fly the next night. Even in a little backyard you could have some amazing migrants during spring.

If you want to have birds in your yard, it’s important to have insects, because they eat lots and lots of insects. Even hummingbirds, insects are the main part of their diet. Providing habitats for insects is critical to having birds in your backyard. You could avoid using pesticides and plant some native plants.

You could put up a feeder, and that could be just a stump and you put black oil sunflower seed on it. It doesn’t have to be a fancy feeder. You could put some on the ground, because some birds are ground feeders. Don’t put out too much seed because you could attract mammals at night to eat it. Water is a great thing to attract birds, too, like a bird bath. You could hang up a hummingbird feeder, and they’ll come to backyards in very urban areas, or even your apartment. We do recommend that you don’t put feeders too close to windows because birds do fly into windows.

What makes someone a successful bird watcher?

Just enthusiasm for learning, wanting to be open and listening, and not giving up. I think anybody can do it, but you do have to be kind of inquisitive. Especially with song and identification, it’s not easy, and that’s what makes it fun.

You can keep a record of what you see in your yard. You could take pictures or draw. Just become familiar with what’s out there. I think it’s really fun to become familiar with the behavior of the birds. I’ve seen some male cardinals feeding females as part of their courtship. You see lots of parents feeding hungry babies. You might see them collecting grass or mud in the yard to build nests.

I think, in this time, too, it’s therapeutic. Just like being in nature and taking a walk can be good for you, I think seeing the cycle of nature with birds, it’s kind of just nice to know that we’re safer at home but the birds are still flying. Those cycles keep going. It’s just been inspiring that they’re back and they seem to be fine. At least for me, to see them coming back this spring, it was good.