Birding Changes

Virtually all of the 20 or so birders and bird-adjacent professionals I spoke with attributed the shift to two watershed events. The first is the coronavirus pandemic: At a moment when many Americans spent far too much time anxiously bouncing around their own home, birding represented a low-stress, low-screen, outdoor activity that could be done without travel. The second is a revolution in birding tech. Birders have always used the newest tools available to them, whether vinyl records of bird calls, rare-bird hotlines, or push notifications. (***mega is lingo for an ultrarare species noted on eBird, a forum where birders report sightings.) But soon after the bird-identification app Merlin introduced Sound ID, a sort of Shazam for bird calls, in 2021, millions of people started using the app, including the 29-year-old Super Bowl champion Sam Darnold and the 33-year-old pop star Ariana Grande. Merlin and similar tools have upended the culture of birding. Ten years ago, aspiring birders…