Q&A With a Birder

Yamina Nater-Otero is a program coordinator for For the Birds!, an environmental education program run by the organization Audubon New York. In this role, she teaches students in New York City all about birds and what people can do to protect birds’ habitat.

Nater-Otero, an avid birder herself, works to support others who enjoy observing birds. She serves on the committee of the Black and Latinx Birders Fund, which offers scholarships to Black and Latinx birders who are pursuing science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) degrees in college.

Nater-Otero recently spoke with SuperScience about birding.

I have been birding for about two-and-a-half years. I started because of my job. Part of the work I do is to take students on bird outings. I thought that if I was going to point out birds to kids, I should probably know a little bit about them. I started going on outings with my local Audubon chapter, Bergen County Audubon, and fell in love with the hobby.

I love that it’s a hobby that gets me out of the house year-round. Last January, I was birding on a beach in the icy winds and had a blast even though I couldn’t feel my face!

Imagine that every autumn, when the leaves drop and the ground starts to freeze, you have to travel thousands of miles to make sure you have food to make it through the winter. Before your big trip, you must gain weight because you are going to need energy to fly—no using a car, train, or plane!

Then on your trip, you run into large predators like outdoor cats and bigger birds, storms that can blow you off course, and giant invisible barriers that hurt you when you run into them (window collisions kill thousands of birds a year). And you must find spots to stop, rest, and refuel.

Birds that weigh a few ounces make this trip twice a year and travel thousands of miles each way!

Spring migration is the magical time of year when birds are returning from the south, and all of our green spaces are filled with bright, tiny, fluttering birds singing loudly.

Because birds are getting ready to nest, they are brightly colored so that they can attract a mate, and they sing loudly to mark their territory. The air is filled with the buzzing of warblers, mockingbirds running through their range of songs they’ve learned from other birds, and cardinals “shooting lasers.” (Go listen to the call of a northern cardinal sometime—it sounds like a laser!)

In certain parts of the country, you can stand in one spot and see the exhausted birds drop at our feet because their tiny wings can’t carry them any further.

The best piece of is to get outside and do it! This doesn’t have to be an expensive hobby. You don’t need binoculars to see birds. You can learn bird songs and calls and “birdwatch by ear.” You can learn birds’ shapes and spot birds’ silhouettes. If you live near a lot of pigeons, you can observe the seven different color morphs (or distinctly colored members) you can find in that species.

There is no one “right way” to enjoy birds. You don’t even have to learn how to identify them. Maybe you just want to go look at them or do nature journaling or use your phone to take pictures of them.

The main tip is to look everywhere for birds—in the sky, on the ground, in the bushes, on tree trunks, in the water. Whether you are going to nature preserves or sitting at your window, you need to make sure you are looking everywhere.

I’m very lucky that I began birding in a city, because it allowed me to surround myself with a diverse group of people who love birding as much as I do.

I know, however, that this is not the same experience for a lot of people. The birding community has a bad habit of putting up a lot of barriers that keep people out. These barriers include requiring binoculars, expensive guides, ignoring local birds and only looking for rare ones, talking down to younger birders or birders of color.

There are also a lot of expectations about how to enjoy the outdoors. Hiking is sometimes seen as an outdoor activity, but having a cookout with your family in the park is not seen as the “right” way to enjoy the outdoors. We need to let these silly rules go and allow people to engage with nature however they see fit—so long as they are respectful of the habitat!

I always tell my students that we breathe the same air birds’ breathe, use the same water they use, and live in the same spaces. When we work to protect bird habitats, we work to protect our own homes.

This is why I love teaching people about birds in urban spaces. People think of nature being this place that’s far away, filled with trees and no buildings around. But we experience nature any time we step outside and take a deep breath. The pigeons that hang out on our homes, the squirrels we see chasing each other, the plants that sprout up in sidewalk cracks, our back and front yards—all of these are an important part of our ecosystem.

Until we all start recognizing that, conservation will only preserve certain places and ignore the needs of the people, plants, and animals that live in our cities. Birding can be a great way to connect to conservation—though it doesn’t have to be the only way!