- Appreciation: Spending time with birds to observe and appreciate their plumages and behaviors in their world. Birds are beautiful without us needing to see them.
- Holistic: We’re interested in bird behavior, differences, ecology, beauty, history, and their importance in different cultures
- Curiosity: There is an infinite amount of knowledge to gain about birds and nature. Things can be learned from all birds, not just rare ones.
- Community Birding: We can see birds anywhere. We prioritize our community of the South side of Chicago
- Preservation and Conservation: Birds didn’t need us before, but they need us now. Clean up habitats when able and help injured birds when needed.
- Citizen scientists: supplement what we learn in the field with research, education, and consulting experts and elders.
- Impact: Documenting and researching how birds and people intersect and interact. We could be seeing any bird for the last time. Through photography and other documentation, we keep memories and stop them from being forgotten.
- Reduce harm: Prioritize the wellbeing of birds and their habitats. Our actions often have direct impact. We try to limit that impact as much as possible.
- Mindfulness: Being in nature improves mental health. Detaching from nature harms us all. We bird to remind ourselves that we are a part of nature and nature is always with us.
- Experimentation: We experiment to improve our knowledge. Mistakes are an essential part of experimentation. You have to fail to be creative and learn.
- Acknowledge and accept that the land we bird on is not ours; it was stolen by settler colonists from indigenous peoples and their descendants.
Instead of listing species, we decided to list the behaviors we are interested in seeing and documenting
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| Killdeer stack parking at Northerly Island. |
Shrike storing food by impaling it on a thorn/barbed wire (common killing strategy)
Peregrine Falcon attacking a businessperson downtown Chicago (read about)
House Sparrow dangling another by the neck feathers (seen but not photographed in our backyard)
Great Horned Owl carrying something like a hobby horse (seen on instagram)
Common Merganser chicks
Gull chicks
American Woodcock mating display
Wild Turkey chicks
Gulls in trees
Great Blue Herons courting
Wood Duck ducklings jumping out of a tree
Bird feeding its chick a preying mantis
Preying Mantis attacking a hummingbird
Road runner eating a snake
Leucistic Turkey Vulture
Leucistic Red-tailed Hawk
Barred Owl hunting crayfish
Roseate Spoonbill chicks
Cattle Egret on a bovine
Video coots underwater
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