Saturday was awesome. Months ago, I was at a Hill Country Conservancy breakfast honoring donors and partners. It was an opportunity to catch up with the variety of things in which HCC is involved. I love their efforts to make more space available and to teach people to use it wisely. My big discovery was Birdability, which does birding accessibility. They arrange walks at locations that are good for people with wheelchairs or vision impairment. I met the founder, Virginia Rose, and an Austin birding captain, Eric Clow. I’ve often felt birding was just outside of my interests, but it shares a lot of what I love about SCUBA. Learning about the identification and behavior of different species takes me back to my marine biology for SCUBA divers class over 30 years ago.
Saturday, I finally managed to attend one of their walks. Eric and Virginia were both there. My friend William drove me and joined us for the walk. It is interesting to observe the behaviors of people, especially those with special skills, to see how they do what they do. Victoria is very visual. She is good at observing color differences in feet, legs, wings, face, and beak. She relies on sound quite a bit, with evocative descriptions of the unique aspects of a call and fun stories about populations that have varied their calls. Eric is extremely aural. He could hear multiple birds calling at the same time and identify them with clues about where to look, knowing their behavior. William is the king of spotting motion. He knows birds a little better than I do, but spotted way more than his share because he is quick with moving the binoculars. I used a 12x monocular that I borrowed. Will try more before deciding on a purchase. I am currently enamored with one that has photo integration with a phone app.

Here are the birds I spotted on our walk. The first column is a link to the eBird page for the bird. Love the Cornell ornithology lab

My favorite was the green heron. I had never noticed one before. The first one did a great job of demonstrating behavior as it stalked along a net strung over the creek and dove for the water to snag some food. I always enjoy experiencing the animal behavior, not just ticking off species counts.