In Parks and Under Overpasses, Birding Is Back and Better Than Ever

Walking through Cedar Park, ankle-deep in mud, I am learning how to look up. Above my head, a male painted bunting, a feathered canvas of red, bright green, and blue, lands on a live oak. A few feet away, a snowy egret wades through the water. Serenity abounds, and I am becoming completely sucked into what one of my fellow birders calls “the art of noticing.”

It’s a Saturday morning, much earlier than I usually wake up, and I’m joining Jorge Buendia’s Birding 101 Walk through Brushy Creek Lake Park. To my surprise, there are dozens of other amateur birders, donning hiking boots and binoculars, eager to walk through the woods for a few hours. 

Some are first-time birders; others have $4,000 cameras with special zoom lenses to shoot northern cardinals and barn swallows. Despite varying levels of experience, the purpose is the same; everyone wants to slow down and be outside for a few hours.

Birding has long been the hobby of retirees and “bird nerds,” demanding early mornings and a particularly sturdy attention span. But as young people become frustrated with doom scrolling and AI slop, birding is emerging as an analog antidote.

Austin has an especially rich birding community. The Travis Audubon Society is one of the most active chapters in the country, according to volunteer Sharon Roy. The organization hosts field trips, classes, and special events throughout Travis County, advocating for conservation through birding. 

A painted bunting in Brushy Creek Lake Park Credit: Jorge Buendia

A few weeks after my walk in Brushy Creek Lake Park, I joined Travis Audubon on a field trip to Parque Zaragoza in partnership with the East Austin Conservancy. Looking at the growing group of birders, Roy remarked, “Aren’t we lucky. I thought everybody had this.” 

“It’s just a really peaceful way to be out in nature with other people who are interested in nature and spend some time together,” she said.

As Roy and I wandered around Parque Zaragoza, I watched as birders managed to pick out a northern cardinal in a sea of construction noise and human chatter. Amazed by their skills, I tried my hand. It is much harder than it looks to identify one wren’s whistle from another. 

Luckily for amateurs like me, apps like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin make it very easy. The app records audio and uses geographic data to tell you the most likely matches. It also offers photo ID, and allows users to input observations.

Walking through the park, my fellow birders called out what they saw; Travis Audubon has a “see something, say something” policy when it comes to any bird spotting, be it woodpeckers, owls, or even the common grackle.

“Birding is kind of like walking on the beach looking for seashells,” said frequent Travis Audubon birder Suzanne LaPinta. “Once you sort of get into it, to me, it just enhances every outdoor activity, because you start to see the birds wherever you are.” LaPinta even keeps binoculars in the center console of her car to search for birds at red lights. 

On the field trip to Parque Zaragoza, Ann McNair was just eager to be out with the group. “I consider myself pretty novice. I’m not into lists. I’m more here for the people.” McNair said. “They’ve done a really good job of being intergenerational … you’ve got 20-year-olds and people in their 80s.” 

When I pulled into the parking lot of Brushy Creek Lake Park for Buendia’s walk, I was expecting to find a group of silver-haired retirees. But, just as McNair said, the crew spanned generations, a mix of Gen Z newbies and folks their parents’ age. 

Some birders, like McNair, picked up birding to connect with nature in a meaningful way. For others, it really is about the birds. Buendia – who started the weekly Birding 101 Walk a few months ago, after his close-up photos of local birds gained major traction on Reddit – is one of those. Though he considers himself a “hobbyist,” he has an encyclopedic recall of different birds in the area. As I followed him through the park, the group’s eager leader remarked on the etymology of bird names and the distinctions across species of wrens and chickadees. 

A Travis Audubon field trip in Parque Zaragoza Credit: Sarah Andrews

Buendia thinks that birding should be accessible to anyone intrigued by the chirps of local songbirds or the impressive wingspans of turkey vultures. To him, it is all about paying attention to the sounds, sights, and quiet moments of nature – that’s where the beauty lies. His advice for novice birders is to listen a little closer: “Try to ignore everything else; just separate that one little sound.”

In Brushy Creek Lake Park, we trudged under the Palmer Lane bridge. It was booming with highway noise and smelled like swampy, still water. Under the noisy overpass, as no-see-ums swarmed my hair and my feet sank further into the mud, I was growing anxious to keep moving along. Then, Buendia pointed out the hundreds of barn swallows making mud nests under the eaves of the bridge. The other birders and I, armed with binoculars, looked up in awe at the flock; above our heads, a whole world was swarming and bustling. 

There, under the bridge and craning my neck to the sky, I began to understand the art of noticing. 

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