Go Birding

This Great Idea comes directly from Nature Conservancy climate scientist and Saving Us author, Katherine Hayhoe, shared in her Talking Climate blog.

Katherine invites us to, ‘Get outside and go birding! Birding is the original ‘Pokeman Go’ – it teaches us how to begin noticing and appreciating other living things that surround us every day.’

I read that just a few hours after hearing a particularly enticing song from a newly-arrived tiny little warbler (?maybe? – I need to learn more birds!!).

And I’ve just been watching The Residence, in which the world’s greatest detective is a birder. In the episode I watched last night she took her nephew birding on the coast to look for a particularly elusive sandpiper. It was a great depiction of the boredom we all assume a young person will have in this scenario – until he’s not bored anymore and a love for birds is born.

What a GREAT intergenerational activity: outdoors, bonding, relationship with nature, relationship with your particular community and environment, and SO many biblical applications… the list goes on.

Here’s Hayhoe’s invitation (the rest of the post is good reading, too!).

Here’s an introduction to birding for all generations from the Audubon Society: How to Become a Birder.

Here are five suggestions for great North America bird books for all ages.