"Tails" of a New Birder's Journey

Today I joined a SoCal Audubon society for a bird walk at Kenneth Hahn Park in LA. I have never been to this park and I was really looking forward to my first event with this particular Audubon Society. However, not only was it a decidedly unbirdy* morning, the event ended up being extremely disorganized and the group was not particularly welcoming. 

In my opinion, when a new person shows up to an official event with an Audubon Society, there should at least be some effort to welcome the new person. I received no such welcome. I won’t mention the leader’s name. I also discovered that he doesn’t keep eBird lists. It’s not a huge bee in my bonnet that no one was welcoming and that no introductions were made, but the fact that an Audubon Society that I give money to be a member of doesn’t make eBird lists vexes me. eBirds lists are contributing to the data that can make funding for birds possible. In this day and age, there is no excuse for an Audubon Society in a heavily populated area to not do eBird lists. 

There was no announcement that the event was starting. Instead, various groups of friends that were scattered around kinda started meandering to the trailhead. A couple of groups spent a good 10 minutes observing a California Quail that was in a cage at the interpretive center (no idea why the Quail was in an enclosure). It was 30 minutes since the event was supposed to start and we were wasting the best part of the day!

I could go on and on about the negatives, and honestly, I tried telling myself several times to “let it go,” but here are a couple of other things that I did not like. First, the guide interrupted me multiple times when I was talking with another birder. I wasn’t sure if he was hard of hearing, so I tried speaking louder, and he talked over me AGAIN. At that point, I decided to just stop trying to make observations and give input. 

Secondly, a male birder put his hands on me to get me into position to see a bird. This has happened to me before–sometimes it’s a woman but most often it’s a man–and I get that it’s a “thing” in birding, but maybe it’s time that we start saying something. Something as simple as, “Please ask me if it’s okay to maneuver me into position to see this bird.” Of course, this is something that occurs after the fact. It didn’t bother me a lot, but then it occurred to me–what if I was a young, new, female birder who DIDN’T know that this is a thing? That could be enough to seriously upset someone and deter them from attending another event with that organization, or quite possibly giving up on birding!

Last of all, I had been hoping to get a lot of species at this event, but only added four. Throughout the bird walk, the various groups were separated. The whole point of having everyone stick to together is so that if one person sees a bird, they can inform the group, and ideally everyone else will see it. The more eyes there are, the more birds that will be seen. Maybe the unbirdy-ness was due to the lack of organization. Here are the 4 species I added to my April list.

92. Brewer’s Blackbird

93. Common Raven

94. Downy Woodpecker

95. Rock Pigeon

*Unbirdy. Adjective. Describes an event, area, or a day of birding that doesn’t yield the expected number of birds or bird species.