Everyone notices birds. But how many of us are birders?
There is a difference, and it comes with its own language. Lifers and listers. Twitchers and stringers. Spark birds and nemesis birds. Birding is a subculture with its own rules, its own ethics, and its own obsessions, and right now, it is one of the fastest-growing communities in America.
Something unexpected is fueling this growth. Technology. The same force often blamed for pulling us indoors has become an unlikely ally. Platforms that track sightings, map migrations, and connect birders across the world, are transforming a solitary pastime into a global community. And they are raising new questions about ethics, competition, and what it means to love birds responsibly.
Scientists are also paying attention. What birding does to the brain, who is joining the community and why, and what this ancient practice of patient attention offers a generation raised on overstimulation. These are open questions, and the answers are only beginning to emerge.
Join John W. Fitzpatrick, Director Emeritus of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Erik Wing, neuroscientist at York University, for a conversation about birds, brains, and a culture in flight.
Join the conversation.
John Fitzpatrick is the Director Emeritus, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
John Fitzpatrick served as Executive Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology from 1995 to 2021, where he also held a professorship in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He holds a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Princeton, and his research has long focused on bird ecology and conservation, including ongoing work on the Florida Scrub-Jay. A lifelong birder since childhood, he is also an occasional bird painter.
Erik Wing is a research associate at York University and Baycrest Hospital in Toronto, where he studies how prior knowledge and expertise shape human perception and cognition. He completed his doctoral work at Duke University focusing on brain representations during visual experience and memory retrieval. Working with birders across North America, he has explored how learning bird identification shapes attention, memory, and new learning through behavioral and brain imaging research.