Have an interest in birds? You belong here!
Birding often starts at home and before you know it, you're chasing rare birds around the county and planning vacations based on new birds you might find. Birds are incredibly interesting in appearance, sound and behavior. Watching them is very rewarding and great for physical and mental health.
Here's an excellent article to learn more about birding.
How to get started
-Ideally you'll want to use binoculars or a camera with zoom. (We usually have binoculars to loan for our events.)
-Download two free apps: Merlin Bird ID and eBird. Watch our tutorials for these below.
Now you're ready!
-Sit somewhere quiet to look and listen for birds. Use Merlin's Sound ID feature to find out what birds you are hearing and look for them.
-Create a checklist of the birds you see with the free eBird app. This will help you maintain your life list in a very easy way, and help you find new birds when you're ready. With each list, you'll be contributing data to one of the largest community science projects!
After doing this a bit, you might find you enjoy slow birding or decide to challenge yourself by setting goals to see more birds next month or next year, move up in the county rankings or do your own big year. Competitive birding is incredibly fun and we have a great group of members that enjoy competing while sharing sightings and cheering each other on. If you're into chasing rarities, let us know and we can add you to our rare bird alert on Whatsapp.
We invite you to attend Marion Audubon birding events to meet others with similar interests and learn more about finding and identifying birds. Watch videos on our YouTube channel.
However you bird, enjoy it!