Walking through Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass. on a recent May morning, the air was filled with a chorus of bird songs.
Identifying the many voices in the chorus was the goal of a group of blind and low-vision birders, there as part of the first national blind birder bird-a-thon.
“Birding is largely by ear… you can get to be a very good birder, just by learning the songs,” said Martha Steele, who helped organize the group as part of the Carroll Center for the Blind, in Newton, Mass.
The group – about 20 people, a mix of blind and sighted participants mostly from Massachusetts – joined more than 200 birders across the country, with the goal of identifying as many species as possible by sound in 24 hours. Birdability, the group behind the event, hopes that birding’s growing popularity can become accessible to everyone, including people who are blind and low-vision.
The youngest birder in the group was 14. Steele started birding 30 years ago, and continued after she lost her vision.
“It gets you outside. It gets you walking, it gets you more in tune with the environment and with the other plants and animals,” she said, as she strolled through the lush garden paths.
Mount Auburn Cemetery is a hot spot for birding each spring, as migrating birds flock to the green oasis in the middle of the city. It’s also an accessible spot, with carefully maintained paths for anyone using canes or mobility devices.
Jared Keyes, who is sighted and guided the group, said most of his birding is by ear.
“My relationship to birds is really ... 95% auditory,” said Keyes. “And I really don’t even bother looking at this point.”
Over the course of the morning, he led the group into what he called “sound rooms” in different habitats around the cemetery. As he heard birds, he used mnemonic devices (“chicka-de-dee-dee”, “zup-zup”, “boop-boop-ba-boop”) to help teach the calls to the group. A number of the birders used technology to track their findings, including the Merlin Bird ID app, which can listen to and identify species.
“Do you hear that? That’s a cardinal,” Keyes said, as he pointed out the vibrant red bird to the group. “Listen to how mellow that whistle of the cardinal is.”
Scroll down to hear the sounds of birds mentioned in this story
Some birds that the group were hoping to hear are common, like the black-capped chickadee, Northern cardinal and Baltimore oriole, and some are more elusive, like the mourning warbler.
Keyes has taught workshops on birding by ear at the Carroll Center. He said it’s an incredible experience to witness people identify individual birds by ear for the first time. “We work on them [bird calls] in the classroom… And then we’d go outside and people’s faces are just lighting up like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s a chimney swift.’”
Jerry Berrier, also helped to organize the event, and has been birding for over 50 years. He started by listening to records of bird calls in college.
“As a congenitally blind person, I have not experienced the visual joy that other people have readily available to them… And birding has been one way that I feel I’ve been able to bridge that gap,” said Berrier. “It’s enriching in ways that it’s hard for me to even describe.”
The group also had some new birders along for the morning, including Kristine Dinardo, who says she has loved birds since she was a kid, but only started the hobby after retiring six years ago.
“To me, birding is very empowering,” she said. “I can learn to identify birds, you know, by their song. And then…read about what they look like. And then I can use my imagination to put … the sight of the bird and the sound of the bird together in my own mind, in my own time”.
Over the course of the morning, the group in Cambridge heard around 30 different birds. In total, birders across 34 states identified 212 different species of birds across the country. The outcome was “really phenomenal” according to Berrier.
Some of the birders in Cambridge were already on their second stop of the day, and planned to keep birding throughout the day.
The participants hope the annual event will encourage more people who are blind and low-vision to experience the joys of birding, even if they didn’t think it was a hobby for them, like Susan Bueti Hill who lives nearby in Cambridge.
“When I was younger, I always heard of birdwatching. … and I never went because I thought it was for people with vision,” she said.
Bueti Hill is now active in numerous adaptive recreation activities, like cycling, kayaking, scuba diving and hiking, and is involved with New England Ski for Light, which promotes the blind community’s involvement in sports. She hopes birding and nature organizations across the country will think more about accessibility.
“It just kind of helps to bring folks who are blind and low-vision into the conversation of this amazing community,” she said.
Listen to recordings of the birds in this story
This story was originally published by GBH and NPR. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
