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BwP Interview: Virginia Rose, Founder and President of Birdability

In this installment, we interview the founder of Birdability, Virginia Rose. Birdability’s mission is to “share the joys of birding with people who have disabilities, and to ensure birding is accessible for everybody.” Through Birdability, contributors have mapped more than 700 birding sites, evaluating each for its safety and accessibility. Birdability has enlisted volunteer “Captains” across the Americas to expand these efforts, lead inclusive birding events, and advocate for accessibility improvements.

BwP: What is your vision for Birdability? What’s success?

VR: I have so many goals for Birdability! I want every accessible birding site to be pinned on the Birdability Map in the US and beyond. I want those sites that are currently inaccessible to become accessible if possible. I want all birders who have access challenges to know where to bird safely. I dearly want to find people with access challenges and introduce them to birding so they can know the joy birding has brought me! Success is making inroads in these directions for the rest of my life.

Are the managers of birding areas open to making changes to improve their Birdability ratings?

Yes. I think people are excited to make sites more accessible. It is up to all of us to help make that happen. It is never one person shouldering the responsibility for improvement. Whenever I approach someone about improving a site, it is with a positive attitude, a helping energy, an inspiring solution and a partnering spirit. I believe people want to help.

You’ve spoken of how meaningful it was for you the first time you could join in the scope line, thanks to your own ingenuity and some deft work by a local camera store. Do you find that adaptive technologies are improving?

I have been in a wheelchair for 48 years, and I saw adaptive technologies in place from the get go. I think the technology has been advancing steadily. As people with accessibility challenges see increased opportunities for access, they are becoming more empowered to seek out adaptive equipment. Optics and camera manufacturers are starting to pay attention! I have seen adaptive harnesses, an increase in the use of monoculars, table-top tripods. I foresee a lot more adaptive equipment for people with accessibility challenges in the future.

Birdability has an adaptive equipment page on its website where people can get [specs for] an attachment like mine. I am rather shameless when it comes to asking for help, especially when it comes to pursuing a passion. I believe people want to help!

I imagine you’ve met quite a few birders with accessibility challenges. Is there a story that stands out?

Actually, for years I was the only birder I knew with an accessibility challenge! Only after I founded Birdability in the last couple of years have I met some amazing birders with accessibility challenges. Blind birders or birders with low vision, birders who are quadriplegics, birders with Multiple Sclerosis, and countless others, each of whom is managing a world with really difficult circumstances, inspire me beyond words. The courage and capacity and spirit of every single access-challenged person I have met reinforce my determination to ensure that birding is accessible to everybody!

How supportive is the Austin birding community?

Travis Audubon has been an amazing source of support for me from the beginning. Eighteen-ish years ago when I began attending classes and field trips in my manual chair, I had no reservations. Perhaps I should have, but I did not and neither did anyone at Travis Audubon though I was the first person with a wheelchair to participate. Classes and TAS meetings were all accessible. My parents taught me to pick up the phone if I had any questions. I called the field trip leaders ahead of time to introduce myself and explain my situation. I made it known that I did not want to impose on them or others on the trip, that I was very independent and happy to bird on my own if the trip included some inaccessible trails.

Essentially, TAS let me do what I could, helped when I asked, and watched and learned. In short, Travis Audubon provided a fabulous space for me to bird and to join a community unlike any I had known before. These folks accepted me on every level.

It seems fitting to close on that note, but before we end, a brief questionnaire:

The BwP Questionnaire: Virginia Rose

“Birder” or “Birdwatcher” (or other?)

Birdability suggests using the word “birder” so that we do not unintentionally imply that interested parties must be able to “watch” birds. There are many ways to bird that do not require sight.

Years you’ve been birding or age you started birding?

I did not start birding until I was in my early 40s.

Did a specific sighting or experience hook you? How did you get started birding?

Many experiences led me to birding. My grandmother was a birder. I remember her walking around outside with the binoculars around her neck and writing notes in her old Peterson’s birding guide. My younger sister also started birding in earnest a few years before I did, and she recommended I try it. Finally, I attended a lecture about birding sponsored by the Travis Audubon Society here in Austin Texas. And I loved it. I immediately joined Travis Audubon Society and enrolled in all the classes and participated in all the field trips.

What was your most recent life bird?

Elegant Trogon! In the Rio Grande Valley of all places!

Do you have a “nemesis” bird?

Connecticut Warbler! Spent lots of time listening to this bird, but have never seen it!

What is your favorite place to bird?

I love birding in the Rio Grande Valley because of its proximity to the tropics and because it’s relatively flat and easy for a wheelchair to manage. I also love birding on the upper Texas coast, starting at the High Island Sanctuaries for migrants and into the East Texas Woods. Of course birding in southeast Arizona is amazing.

“binoculars” “bins” “binocs” or “field glasses”?

I use the terms “binoculars,” “binz,” (rhymes with benz) “binoz” (rhymes with rhinos)

When you’re not birding, you are

I love gardening, reading, and sharing plays, concerts and meals with friends. Even while I am doing those things, I am birding, listening constantly to birding noises outside indicating the presence of a predator or fledglings or migrants. Birding is nonstop for many of us, and we understand that. We are always watching overhead even as we are sharing a meal outside. It seems rude to people who don’t get it. We can’t help ourselves.

What’s your motto?

I have loads of mottos!
  • You won’t know until you go!
  • Difficulty and uncertainty lead to empowerment and joy!
  • Rediscover your explorer! He or She is probably your best self!
  • Pay attention!

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The Jets and the Sharks, the Crips and the Bloods…the Jays and the Grackles?

It’s been so quiet lately in the doldrums of Summer, but there’s a showdown in the backyard this morning. A half-dozen or so Blue Jays are in a standoff with a similar number of Common Grackles over control of the sunflower seed feeder. It’s all posturing so far, but on the fringes the glossy Grackles are sharpening their beaks on the dangling remnants of bittersweet vines while the Jays are taking to the high branches and calling for reinforcements.

They appear to be families, mostly adults with a few first-years mixed into each group. I would go further to say the grackles resemble not just a family, but an organized-crime family. The internet says it’s an “annoyance” or “plague” of grackles, but in our yard “mob” would be more accurate for these brash, hierarchical thugs.

They are facing off against a “party” or “band” or “scold” of Jays–all apt collective nouns for this morning’s freewheeling garrulous crew. The band seems porous, with members coming and going, confusing the numbers and irritating the grackles even more.

So it’s good vs. evil in the backyard today, the bad guys all sleek in their glossy dark suits, the jays flashing their blue/black colors, a few drab youngsters in each crew for reinforcement, learning the ropes.

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Erase the Eponyms: Honor Birds with Honorable Names

I find myself worrying a lot nowadays, perhaps a side-effect of my PD medications,  but certainly not without merit. Among the many worry-worthy subjects, I fret a great deal about the world we are leaving to future generations of birders, including my sons.

While visible and vocal, the birding community is still relatively small, and expanding and diversifying is an important first step to raising awareness of these threats. One exceptionally easy thing we can do is replace offensive eponymous bird names that memorialize and pay tribute to colonialist slaveowners, racists, and sexists–pretty much every name containing an apostrophe. The simple act of rejecting these odious connections and honoring the birds with honorable names will have an effect that extends beyond nomenclature. A willingness to engage with the subject is an assertion that inclusivity is valued. Making birding more inclusive and welcoming–a good in and of itself–will result in more birders, and more birders means more advocates for birds and conservation. In relating names to distinctive aspects of the species’ habits, habitats, appearance, or home ranges, new names could actually add value to the birding experience by calling out memorable or noteworthy aspects of the species.

Long-tailed Ducks, formerly known by a racist, sexist, ageist name, at Halibut Point, MA. 2018.

Will this cause confusion? Of course! People hate change, but after a little grumbling, past name changes have been adopted quickly (cf. Long-tailed Duck, Thick-billed Longspur.) In practice, new names are constructed and old names dusted off and reinstated every time the AOS gets the urge to lump or split, which is to say, quite frequently. Scientific names also change regularly in response to new DNA discoveries, and as a result even whole genera are sometimes reassigned (RIP Dendroica!) and birders more or less keep up. It’s time to attack this opportunity with gusto.

What can one do right now?

Educate yourself— Bird Names for Birds is a good place to start. The bird-renaming week thread at 10,000 Birds is a thought-provoking peek into the ongoing discussion.

Look for opportunities to engage others. Bring the subject up with other birders.

Be creative. For us, for example, this is a “teachable moment,” and in response we are devising a home-schooling study unit that includes a little bit of avian biology, a little bit of history, and possibly a little bit of field observation, incorporating this research into an advocacy project that picks a species, suggests an improved name, and provides an argument substantiating that choice.

Write the AOS advocating for the replacement of dishonorable eponyms with accurate, descriptive names.

And maybe, if a few more people take up the cause, we can all worry just a little less.

breaking

As I was about to publish, the AOS announced an ad hoc committee to recommend how to think about thinking about changing names: “a committee charged with developing recommendations for guidelines and procedures used to identify and change harmful English bird names. This new committee will not have the responsibility of changing English bird names, but rather will make recommendations on a process to do so that includes the perspectives from many stakeholders in the broader ornithological and birding communities.”

In other words, a meta-committee that appears to have little real power beyond its moral mandate to talk about how to talk about the subject.

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Subconscious Beauty Detector

dignified, invisible / Moving without pressure…

My son, growing up in an age of pure digital imagery and ultra-cheap flash storage, never learned the economy dictated by the roll of film (and what a sneaky joy it was–as though you had pulled a fast one on Kodak– to squeeze an extra shot or two in at the end of a roll!) The result is that he takes a lot of pictures, several hundred a week sometimes, and it’s my job to go through our uploads and delete the many, many out of focus, mostly cryptic understory shots, lest we be forced to take a second mortgage out to pay our cloud storage bills.

While pruning the latest upload, which included dozens of pictures of one mostly-obscured-by-foliage Prairie Warbler, something clicked just as I was about to hit delete for the nth time, stopping me in mid-keystroke. It wasn’t a dyskinesia, it was some other unconscious application of the brakes, and in those few milliseconds of hesitation I saw something I had missed.

It was the same obscured Prairie Warbler but this frame caught the bird in flight, landing I think, or more properly, alighting: primaries and secondaries in a blurry spread, all motion, a photo grainy but strangely beautiful in its capture of an otherwise invisible, graceful moment.

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Global Big Day

Here in the Northeast of North America, the first few weeks of May means migration, a brief time when birders’ hearts beat as fast as the tinosaurs we seek. We await spectacular fallouts of passerines headed for their breeding ranges; some few stop here to settle down and seek a mate, finding the habitat suitable enough. Warblers come and go in crisp breeding colors, less “Sunday best,” more “Saturday night fever.”

It’s a time to play hooky, grab your bins, and spend hours staring at the tops of the trees. A wide variety of bird families–not just Parulidae–are representing now. Birds like this Rose-breasted Grosbeak:

RBGB near Sekdin Island, May3, 2021

Between the broad-ranging, long-term effects of climate change, and the near term ravages of PD, you never can tell how many more spring migrations you will get, so make each one count. And speaking of counting, get out there with some (masked and vaccinated) buddies and submit your lists this Saturday (May 8)!

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Catching Up

“He who made you bitter made you wise.“

Palm Warbler (Setophaga palmarum), emissary of Spring, 4/18/2021 credit: HPMS

Spring arrives in the northeast, as it presumably has for centuries, on the impatient, wagging tails of the Palm Warbler and the Eastern Phoebe. Their arrival couldn’t be more welcome this year, after thirteen months of isolation and quarantine, and they bring the hint of the possibility that this sequestration might even come to an end before it’s time for them to turn around and head south again. After a solid year when so many activities for so many people were paused, postponed, and canceled, I am feeling that itch to get in the field again. Call it “COVID Zugunruhe.”

As I continue to adjust my mix of braindrugs (for now, pramipexole + sinemet), I wonder how birding will be different this year. It seems that in addition to a perennially and progressively unruly left hand, my right hand is a little shaky now, too, so better binocular stabilization is the first concern. The monopod is still very helpful in this regard, but looking up into treetops to see migrating birds is sure to be a challenge. I’m already dreading how “warbler neck” is going to interact with PD’s manifestations of stiffness and inflexibility. It’s a good thing the scope has an angled eyepiece!

Given these viewing challenges, one might think it’s time to double-down on “birding by ear,” and indeed keen and practiced listening is extremely helpful. Here again my body rebels, but I can’t blame the PD—this is on me, thanks to those cochlear-assaulting rock concerts of my teens. While I admit they were earsplitting, I didn’t expect them to be literally so, and it doesn’t seem fair to have such a note called due 40 years later.

Finally, while my strides have shortened a little bit, and my gait is not great, all-in-all I feel fairly well balanced and mobile, which I attribute in large part to a program of Rock-steady Boxing twice a week. So, physically, I can safely get out there, although what I actually can see and hear when I do is uneven and a little problematic.

In light of all this, it is clear that the PD clock is relentlessly ticking. And so, shockingly for the first time ever, I have asked myself three questions:

  • Which birds do I most want to see?
  • What subset of the above can I reasonably try to see?, and
  • How might I manage to get to where I need to go while I still can appreciate them?

Somewhere in between bouts of wallowing in self-pity in general and these questions in particular (which by the way I have not yet answered) I have come to consciously recognize just how important the sense of fulfillment that comes with sharing birding with others, especially with my loved ones. Duh! It seems so evident now but I never thought about it too deeply before. It’s not about a validation of my own interests, or building a coalition to justify field time, or generic “bonding activities,” it is more than that.

A particular joy is kindled when you help someone see the natural world. A door is opened they didn’t even know existed. Their nature-blindness cured, they gain the opportunity to appreciate what they could not see before, even though it was right in front of them. It’s as though you have shared a magical secret.

You didn’t expect anything, but they thank you in many ways. Sometimes they pay you back in the field, picking out birds with their keener eyesight and sharper hearing. Sometimes they share the thrill of their lifers with you. On a walk this morning my youngest son correctly contradicted one of my identifications, and my eldest son, grown up and living 1500 miles away, messaged with an update on the arrival of his own latest spring migrant: a Great Crested Flycatcher. I couldn’t be prouder.

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Finch Conjunctivitis

This American Goldfinch has its left eye completely crusted over. Photo: HPMS

It’s not pretty, and it’s not confined to House Finches anymore: a nasty avian conjunctivitis continues to afflict songbirds here in the Northeast and across the continent. It’s sobering to consider that this has infected birds for at least two or three decades. As soon as my son alerted me to one we pulled the feeders down, cleaned them with Chlorox, and resolved to amp up the frequency and thoroughness our cleaning regimen.

Interested in reading more? The Lab of O has an article on how the disease originated and spread, and this article from the NYS DEC has more about the disease as well as recommendations on what to do if finches show up diseased at your feeder, including a thorough cleaning with a bleach solution.

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Sparrow for the Turn of the Year

Fox Sparrow, 12/31/2020
Fox Sparrow, 12/31/2020

What a joy to have a visitor for the New Year’s! Our first Fox Sparrow in more than two years was called out by my eight-year-old on New Year’s Eve: this rufous traveler was the last bird to be added to the 2020 list. I woke up New Year’s morning hoping it might make a repeat appearance.

Fox Sparrow, 1/1/2021

It did!

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Get Off My Lawn!

A Yellow-breasted Chat shows up in my local patch, one of the few birders who occasionally comes through the area, maybe to follow up on some Pintails I reported, posts the sighting to the regional birding listserv, and now people are coming out of the woodwork to see it. What was once a quiet backwater is, well, mostly still a quiet backwater, but there are strange visitors with big telephoto lenses and expensive bins and hybrid vehicles here now. A few of them look like they are going to tip over testing the near focus of those lopsided cameras on a patch of brambles just feet away.

It’s not serious–this is not a Painted Bunting, Black Hawk, or some flavor of western flycatcher, and I have to tell myself to take a deep breath. Most of these people will soon leave, having bumped the number of hotspot contributors a bit, but not ruining anything by their transient presence. On the contrary, it is good for birders (or bird-watchers, some of these people are definitely bird-watchers) to visit “my” hotspot, in so far as it justifies keeping it on the books as a (lazy backwater but still addressable) “hotspot.” Call it a “lukewarmspot.”

Still, it’s hard to share once you’ve found a little bit of refuge. Narcissistically, it’s easy to appropriate a place as one’s own, to come to think of a place as “your” place. In fact, it’s natural to do so and is ingrained in our western, or at least US, cultural norms and land use laws. I’m not just talking about western ranchers running roughshod over the national forests, refusing to pay grazing fees and occupying NWRs (although there we have a glaring example of one group “loving a resource to death” at the expense of all others, claiming special usage rights to what is seen by them as otherwise unproductive land.) One needs only look to the various state laws establishing easements and “squatter’s rights,” or adverse possession, to see the bias for “the full use of the land.” The slippery slope from “discovery” to “ownership” is front and center in our impulse to plant the flag, to colonize, to assert the superiority of our activities, ignoring the claims of others, even those who came before. As to a hammer everything is a nail, we are biased, prone to define “full use” as the way we personally, individually view the land.

So sharing is hard by nature, and sharing is a double-edged sword: public lands, even local lands like this town forest, especially local lands like this town forest, need advocates to fight for their utility as open space. Pragmatically, that means sharing: welcoming a diverse set of users such as hikers and strollers, people walking their kids and their dogs, joggers, maybe even a few birders. The back-cutting edge of the sword is the risk that “your” place will be loved to death: dogs running amok off-leash; kids leaving painted rocks everywhere, screaming as they go as if intentionally to scare away as many birds as possible; mountain bikers ripping through the woods.

There’s the rub: thanks for visiting, but get off my lawn!