Birds of a Feather
Birdability wants to make birding accessible to everyone
Just about every medical expert agrees: Getting outdoors is good for virtually everyone's health. For some, however, decreased mobility and other health challenges can make finding a way to enjoy nature just one more hurdle that can't be overcome.
Birdability wants to break down that barrier. The Austin, Texas-based nonprofit focuses on helping people with mobility challenges, blindness or low vision, chronic illness, hearing issues and other disabilities discover the joy of birding and being outside.
"Being outside for hours on a trail with like-minded people has brought me a joy I never had before."
"Being outside for hours on a trail with like-minded people has brought me a joy I never had before," says Birdability founder Virginia Rose in a video explaining her reasons for starting the organization in 2018.
Rose, a retired English teacher who has been in a wheelchair since a horseback riding accident when she was 14, discovered birding about 20 years ago. She was driving home from school and heard about a lecture being sponsored by her local Audubon chapter. She attended it and fell in love.
Rose started attending more birding lectures and events at the Travis Audubon chapter. "I began thinking how could I take this experience and bring it to other people, other people in wheelchairs, other people who don't realize they can do it," she recalls in the video.
So in 2018, she began the Birdability pilot program in Austin where she lives, letting people and organizations know about accessible trails she had discovered around the area.
Increasing Accessibility
Today, Birdability has volunteer captains in all 50 states working to educate people and organizations about the benefits of birding. The captains lecture on birding, lead accessible birding trips, and work to create more trails that are accessible in every way possible.
Birdability has an extensive resource guide on its website that provides interested volunteers with information on how to determine if an area can be made more accessible, a detailed guide on how to make a trail more accessible, and tips for leading accessible birding excursions.
The website also explains how people can add accessible trails to the crowdsourced Birdability accessibility map, a worldwide map collaboration with the National Audubon Society that is updated regularly. The map recently had 1800 sites in 15 different countries, according to Birdability Executive Director Cat Fribley.
"There should not be gatekeeping for what birding is."
"We are working hard to remove barriers from birding," Fribley says. "There should not be gatekeeping for what birding is. There is this concept that you have to have expensive scopes or checklists or it's seen as a white upper class pursuit for people with no problems."
"For us we want to remind people that everyone deserves the benefits, the mental and physical benefits of birding. For us what birding means is simply observing wild birds…whether viewing or listening, whether with us or by yourself. Using a car, binoculars, a computer — you name it. There are as many ways to bird as there are people."
Fribley knows firsthand the mental and physical benefits of birding. She initially started birding when she was 18. A survivor of sexual violence who suffered from PTSD, she vividly remembers walking with her college roommate who was from a family of birders.
"We were walking on a path and I was talking about what a difficult path I was on and she said, 'Look at that woodpecker.' It was maybe the first moment I could remember that my mind got quiet and I could be fully present," Fribley says. "That mindful presence was the core for me to move forward in my life."
Birding as a Coping Skill
Fribley continued to use birding as a core coping skill for her own health as well as with clients while working for 30 years in the anti-sexual violence movement. Then she fell down the stairs and shattered her knee and leg.
"I started birding on my own and then started doing work on accessibility."
"My ability to move through the world has never been the same," she says. Figuring out how to continue birding has been critical in helping her figure out how to navigate this new normal, she says.
Volunteer Captain Mark Paller, 71, knows all about life changes and how birding can help make a difference. A retired nephrologist in Minneapolis, Paller had a heart transplant 16 years ago that led to the discovery that he has muscular dystrophy. The resulting muscle weakness means that he uses a wheelchair or scooter for any walking beyond one tenth of a mile.
"I was looking for something to do, a way to stay connected [to the outdoors]," says Paller, who was a backpacker and canoeist earlier in his life. "I started birding on my own and then started doing work on accessibility."
"Not all birding has to be the same for everyone," continues Paller, who leads trips and raises awareness about birding opportunities as a Birdability captain. "I think if people realize they can do hardcore birding by visiting a nature center with a birdfeeder, that would double the ranks of people who do great birding."
Bee Redfield, a conservation ecologist and Birdability board of directors member, is excited about the conservation possibilities that birding awareness and involvement can create. As director of the Pollinator Partnership, she knows firsthand how critical birds are to the ecoverse.
In Hawaii, for instance, birds are the number one pollinator. "When plants and animals co-evolved, there were no bees or ants [on the island]," she says, "so the plants adapted to use birds as pollinators."
"For me birding is this great magical way that so many people can be wowed and inspired," Redfield adds. "It inspires you to care more about something you may never have thought about before."
Bringing People Together
The activity can also be a unifier, she says. "I've seen groups of birders come together and overcome [their differences] through the sheer joy of birding. The dialogue can help us come together."
"When we introduce people to birding, it's for their own mental and physical benefit but it's for community building, too."
Fribley sees these benefits as well. "When people get introduced to birding and have joy, they then care about birds. If you care deeply about birds, that means caring deeply about their environment and their food," she says. "When we introduce people to birding, it's for their own mental and physical benefit but it's for community building, too."
Currently six Birdability interns are working in national parks across the country to create new accessibility programs. An intern in Massachusetts, for instance, is working on creating programs for birders who are blind or have low vision. Another at George Washington Memorial Park in Washington, DC is focusing on plans for birders with hearing loss, while at Saguaro National Park in Arizona, an intern is creating neurodivergent birding programming.
This pilot intern program is funded through the National Park Service, which has already approved funding for a new round of interns in 2025, according to Fribley.
"While our work focuses on people with disabilities and health concerns, that's potentially all of us," Fribley says. "If we're living in able bodies now, it's only because we haven't had an issue yet. Disability is something that can move in and out of our lives. As we age, this becomes even more of a thing — this recognition that if you are living currently in an able body with a neurotypical shell, it doesn't mean you always will do that."
She continues, "If we're building things that are most accessible for people with disabilities, we're building them for everyone, whether it's people with strollers or people with new hips."