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In this membership-drive mini-series, we get to know about hobbies and building skills and finding communities for fun. Today, Kate Hinds, long-time birding enthusiast and senior producer at All Of It, shares her passion for birding.
- Kate's list of organizations with information, and gatherings, for birders:
American Littoral Society – they work at Sandy Hook, Jamaica Bay, Barnegat Bay
Urban Park Rangers offers Feminist Bird Club (has chapters in NYC and Jersey City)
[MUSIC]
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Are you a hobbyist? Would you like to be? All through this membership drive, we're going to look at some of the popular ways we spend our time honing new skills and finding community virtually and in person, among other people as obsessed as we are with yarn, clay, paper, glass, or getting up early to sit and watch the birds. That last one is today's hobby.
We're joined now by All Of It senior producer, Kate Hinds, a dedicated birder. She has worked as a producer on this show in the past and has been a guest many times, once to talk about ducks, you may remember. We'll range a little wider and talk about all of birding, how to get started, what you need, and how to sound like you know what you're doing at all.
Hi, Kate.
Kate Hinds: Hey, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: How did you get into birding?
Kate Hinds: Many, many years ago, I lived on a big plot of land in Vermont, and one of my neighbors was a birder, and we would stand outside and just talk when the weather was nice, and she would pause every now and then and say, "Oh, I hear a yellow-bellied sapsucker." She birded by ear, and I was like, "What? You can tell what that is." She got me really intrigued, so I started birding with her.
Brian Lehrer: Nice. What's a good place for a newbie to start?
Kate Hinds: If you live in New York City, you have endless variety of choices. My patch is Central Park. It's a wonderful place to bird. There are a ton of birders there. You will walk around and see a million people with binoculars, and you can just go up to any of them and ask them what they're looking at. Same with Prospect Park, a very well-birded spot. Queens has Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which is amazing. It's probably my very favorite place in New York City. There are a lot of really good birding spots here.
Brian Lehrer: What kind of equipment is needed? Binoculars? Anything else?
Kate Hinds: Yes, you really do need binoculars. If you don't want to spend money on binoculars, and they can be pretty pricey, although you could buy an entry-level pair for around $150, a lot of places will loan them to you, like New York City Audubon, which offers free birding programs and walks. I think Jamaica Bay will also loan you binoculars, but you definitely need binoculars, that's super helpful.
Brian Lehrer: How much do you rely on your eyes over your ears, ears identifying bird calls?
Kate Hinds: It really depends. I bird by ear quite frequently. You really have to bird by ear, especially when the leaves have come in because you won't see the birds really high up in the trees, you will hear them first. I mostly bird by ear to start.
Brian Lehrer: We have a snippet of bird song that you recorded of a bird I understand you're hoping to see this weekend. Should I just play it or do you want to say something about it first?
Kate Hinds: I will say that when I hear this bird, I know spring is here.
Brian Lehrer: Nine seconds of the call of spring. Go.
[playing chirp of a red-winged blackbird]
There it is, and I couldn't have told you except to have it on this piece of paper in front of me that that's the red-winged blackbird.
Kate Hinds: That is the red-winged blackbird, and I have on good authority actually from Alec Hamilton, the Morning Edition producer, that they have arrived in Prospect Park. Spring is here, at least in Brooklyn. I will go out to Central Park this weekend just to confirm that. They're an amazing bird. They're wonderful to see. They're easy to tell. A lot of bird calls are similar. Not those. When you hear that, you know that's a red-winged blackbird.
Brian Lehrer: Milton, can we cue that up again? Let's play the red-winged blackbird one more time in a minute, just for fun. I don't know if you have an impression about this, Kate, but with global warming, and we did a segment on how there hasn't been much snow in this region in recent years, is the red-winged blackbird, this harbinger of spring, coming earlier than in the past, if you know?
Kate Hinds: I don't know that. For me, as long as I've been birding, they tend to come at the end of February, beginning of March, but climate change has definitely affected both the migratory patterns of birds and their habitation.
Brian Lehrer: As I understand it, birders keep track of all the birds they've seen on what's called their life list. Is that something a lot of birders do?
Kate Hinds: Oh yes, birders always keep lists, and most birders use something called eBird, which is an app and a computer program that is created by the Cornell Ornithology Lab up in Ithaca, and you keep your eBird list, you can download the app. It is a great way to keep track of what you are watching, and it also helps you keep track of what you're seeing them in. For example, when I see a red-winged blackbird this weekend, I'm going to say I saw it near Turtle Pond, I saw both males and females, and I saw a flock of 30 of them. At least that's what I'm hoping for.
Brian Lehrer: How many birds are on your life list?
Kate Hinds: Only 371. I actually just checked, which is a lot, but since there are about 10,000 birds, I have a lot more to go.
Brian Lehrer: Are there any controversies in birding or schools of thought that people adhere to that are different from each other?
Kate Hinds: Oh my God, Brian. So many birding controversies. The top ones, at least in New York City, probably revolve around the use of social media to post locations of sensitive species like owls. A lot of people think that that's very harmful to owls. If you post on Twitter that one has appeared in Central Park, a million people will show up and look at it. That is a fairly hot-button issue, as is the use of playing bird calls to attract other birds, which is something that has actually led to fistfights in Central Park.
Brian Lehrer: What about birding lore? I understand there's a sweet, sweet story here.
Kate Hinds: When you see a new species for the first time, you go home that night and you eat a slice of what's called lifer pie, which just basically means you celebrate a new species by eating pie. Because I had always heard about that but never understood the origin, I researched it and it turns out that it comes from an area in Ohio which is infamous for migratory songbirds near this very famous swamp. There is a family restaurant that serves really good pie, and apparently, people would go birding at this swamp in Ohio and then finish the day off with pie and then talk about the lifers that they'd seen.
Brian Lehrer: All right, we're going to put Kate's list of birding organizations, folks, on our webpage at wnyc.org. In the meantime, let's replay those nine seconds of the red-winged blackbird harbinger of spring in the New York area.
[playing chirp of a red-winged blackbird]
We leave it there with Kate Hinds, All Of It senior producer. Thanks, Kate. You can go across the hall to the All Of It studio now while I tell folks what's coming up on your show.
Kate Hinds: Thank you, Brian.
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