Birding is fun — but it can be exhausting, too. Here's how 'slow birding' can help you connect with birds in calmer, more meaningful ways.
For a hobby most non-birders consider easy and relaxing, birding actually involves a fair bit of work. Monitoring rare bird reports, getting up before dawn to see birds when they’re most active, keeping tabs on bird migration routes and vagrants within driving distance… birding is fun, but it can require significant time and energy, plus financial commitments. If you’re unable to do all of that, can you still be a birder? Vermont-based naturalist Bridget Butler says yes! In fact, that’s the purpose of her slow birding initiative. Here’s what it means to be a ‘slow birder,’ and how you can participate.
What Is Slow Birding?
Simply put, slow birding is about observing the birds where you are rather than setting out in search of them. It places focus on genuine connection with nature and inner peace. Its goal is to encourage “slow birders” to experience the beauty of the outdoors instead of hunting down the next addition to their life list.
To Bridget, the practice of slow birding resulted from wanting an alternative to traditional birding practices. “I was looking for something more,” she says, noting that she didn’t “quite fit” with a competitive, numbers-driven version of the hobby. When she considered what she most enjoyed about birding, she found her happiness lay in observation rather than identification. “For me, behaviors were more fascinating than the name of the bird,” Bridget says. “I wanted to deeply get to know each bird and how they existed on the landscape… I almost wanted to get to know them as I would get to know a human being.”
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How Can I Try Slow Birding?
The great thing about slow birding is that it’s open to all, anywhere, at any time. Whether someone’s in the city or country, an empty field or a downtown balcony, they can slow bird. To get started, Bridget recommends sitting down in an easily accessible, comfortable place, taking deep breaths, and paying attention as you listen to and observe the birds around you for more than 20 minutes.
In Bridget’s courses, she focuses the practice of slow birding around three prompts: ‘I wonder,’ ‘I notice’ — which she emphasizes is different from identifying — and ‘It reminds me of.’ To the last prompt, Bridget says reflecting on a memory connects a birder to that individual through their own experiences, which aids in recognition and appreciation.
Participants can utilize the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin app for sound identification and take notes in the field, if they wish. Bridget says binoculars aren’t necessary. “Binoculars can often be a barrier,” she notes. “You can slow bird without them.”
Noticing and connecting with other wildlife, such as squirrels, deer, or chipmunks is encouraged, too; Bridget mentions that slow birders have sometimes sat still enough that deer wander by and graze in front of them.
Too, slow birding can help people take a break from the chaos of constant news cycles and difficult world events. “As we know, this matters right now,” Bridget says. “Slow birding is really a way of reclaiming our attention from a world that completely scatters it, oftentimes in a negative and unhealthy way. It brings us back to a calm, playful, and alive sort of attention.”
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About the Expert
Bridget Butler is a Vermont-based naturalist who teaches courses on the practice of slow birding and forging meaningful connections with nature. She is a member of the Vermont Bird Records Committee, as well as Green Mountain Audubon’s Education Grant Committee.
