Words On Birds 10-02-26

More Likes of Birding in 2026
October 02, 2026
By Steve Grinley

     Last week, I shared with you some short essays on “What I like best about Birding in 2026”, collected by birding friend and former school teacher Brian Cassie. Written by folks who began birding before 1990, before the age of today’s birding technologies, I will share a few more entries with you today:

     “What I like Best about Birding in 2026.

     I was born in 1958. (I see this is a tricky way to find out how old your friends are.)

     I started birding in 1990, when I made my earliest notes in a Golden Guide and a National Geographic Society Field Guide to North American Birds – just single birds here and there.

     I had no idea that people actually kept something they called a “Life List” of all the birds they’d seen, or a “Day List” of all the birds they saw after a day of birding.I started documenting and keeping a list of birds in 1996. My friends Joan and Dave were at my apartment in Cambridge one morning when Dave announced that there was a report of a Great Gray Owl in Rowley. Dave did not seem very excited about it but Joan and I perked up and said “Let’s go see it!.” Still, Dave was not too keen on driving all the way to Rowley, saying things like “We’ll never be able to find it.” Joan and I figured there would be lots of people looking for the bird, so let’s go!! And we did.

     Dave had the latest intel from the Mass Audubon Rare Bird Hotline and we headed to Rowley. We arrived to find what looked like hundreds of people standing along the road looking into a farm field. We watched the Great Gray Owl from the road with the others. It perched on fence posts and it flew and hunted in perfect view for all its admirers. We could not have imagined a better day.

     When we arrived back in Cambridge, sitting around the kitchen table Joan and Dave both asked for pen and paper and started writing. I asked them what they were doing and they replied they were making their bird day list. The Great Gray Owl would be a life bird and they would document the sighting in their “Birder’s Life List and Diary” when they got home. I never realized there was anything like this! And so, my Birding Life List began that day.

     What I like best about birding in 2026 is the accessibility of information, using the ‘listening’ function of Merlin, and the Sibley Field Guide apps made for our phones.

     I am happy that I no longer need to carry around a field guide; those things are heavy! I am happy that I no longer need to start listening to Peterson’s Birding by Ear CDs in February in preparation for spring migration!”

     “What I Like Best About Birding in 2026

     I was born in 1971.

     I started looking at birds when I was 5 or 6 years old, just because we had a bird feeder in winter and my dad would point out the birds to me. However, I really did not pay much attention to them in my teens and 20’s. In my 30’s, when I was doing my doctorate at Cape Cod National Seashore on beach invertebrates (Piping Plover food), I saw a fellow biologist get really excited about a dead Northern Gannet that had washed in on the beach. I also heard my first Bobwhite and was stunned by an American Woodcock “peenting” behind a shrub in the backyard.

     After graduate school, I moved to Boston and went on my first guided bird walks at Mount Auburn Cemetery and Arnold Arboretum. I was amazed by several birders’ ability to spew out warbler ids based on calls. I joined Citizen Scientists at Mount Auburn Cemetery in 2015 and and made a lot of friends.

     Someone suggested the CD “Birding by Ear,” and I started listening carefully to birds in the field. It helped. And now, I have two jobs that draw on my bird knowledge (one of them is leading Citizen Scientists at Mount Auburn)! I am just so grateful for all the connections and wonderful like-minded people I have met through birding.”

     “What I Like Best About Birding in 2026

     I was born in 1943. I started birding in 1967.

     I love that I have been birding with my husband since 1967 and learned to recognize birds in many ways over the years. Just recently, my neighbor in Vermont was very concerned about encountering a bear along the backroad where she lives and she asked me to accompany her on her after dinner walk. When a strange sound echoed from the woodside, my dear friend was petrified and said, “It’s a bear. I know it is.” “It isn’t a bear,” I assured her, “it’s a Barred Owl and that is its typical ‘Who Cooks for You’ call. There’s nothing to be worried about.” And, of course, there wasn’t.

     Knowing bird calls has all sorts of advantages!”

     “What I Like Best About Birding in 2026

     I was born in 1970. I started birding in 1986.

     I started birding after going on a field trip with my high school biology class to the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. Like most birders, I was initially motivated almost entirely by finding new things. I mostly birded on my own or with my mother. Occasionally, the parent who led that field trip or my biology teacher would take me out. But without a consistent mentor, and being too cheap or ignorant to join the BBC, I learned by studying my Golden Field Guide. I would come home from school every day and pore over the plates in that book.

     Today, the internet, smartphone apps, and Merlin seem to have taken the place of the field guide. But I still love my bird books, especially field guides and I feel incredibly privileged to have access to the information about the birds of the world and birding the world that is presented in these books. A close second to books is Australian sunsets (or any other beautiful location).

     (She sent a photograph she had just taken of an Australian sunset.)”