Birding
BIRDING – August 10, 2026 – Millville, New Jersey, USA
“What have you been doing all day?” Emmitt’s mom asked him when she arrived home from work.
“I dunno. Not much,” Emmitt replied lazily.
“The summer’s almost over and all you’ve done is lay around the house,” his mom replied with a huff.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“How about go outside and enjoy the fresh air? Get some sunshine. You’ll be locked up in school before you know it. Why don’t you do something with Jack?”
“He’s at his job. He’s always at his job.”
“Well, I don’t want you staring at the TV or computer anymore. Go spend at least an hour in the backyard.”
Emmitt rolled his eyes over his mom’s sporadic interest in him getting outside and exposed to “the outdoors.”. The urge to get him into nature was new. During past summers, he had spent most of the time with his friend, Jack, and his mom had not worried about the two boys “wasting time”. But Jack’s birthday was earlier than Emmitt’s. He turned sixteen before summer started, got his driver’s license, and then got a job at a car wash. Emmitt was stuck at home mostly watching YouTube videos by himself.
When his mom came home from work looking tense and cranky, Emmitt knew it was best not to argue with her. The crease between her furrowed eyebrows looked especially deep and Emmitt recognized this was one of those times. He subtly grabbed his phone, walked to the back door of their single-story house, and retreated into the backyard.
The backyard measured 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep and held nothing interesting or entertaining. It consisted of a few lawn chairs, a brown wooden fence, a patchy lawn Emmitt procrastinated mowing, and a single maple tree. The back fence bordered woods where other trees grew with their limbs hanging into the yard.
Emmitt plopped into one of the lawn chairs and wondered how to spend the next hour. A Blue Jay flew from a lower branch of the maple to a higher one, shrieking as it went. The sound and motion reminded Emmitt of something he had watched on YouTube about birding. The guy in the YouTube video had an app on his phone that could identify birds from the sounds they made. Emmitt could not remember the app’s name but a quick search on his phone brought up something called Merlin. It was free to download and in only a few minutes, Emmitt had it running on his phone.
The instructions for Merlin said Emmitt could identify birds by taking their picture or recording their song. He listened to the whistles and bird chatter beyond the fence and wondered what was out there. He activated Merlin’s sound identifier, and it began recording. In only a few seconds, profiles for three bird species popped up: Carolina Wren, Blue Jay, and Eastern Towhee. The app asked if Emmitt wanted to add the birds to his Life List. He did.
A user’s Life List kept track of every kind of bird he or she saw or heard. Emmitt admired the three birds in his list and immediately wanted more. He stood up and walked toward the tree and fence. A red-breasted Robin landed on the fence and looked around for bugs. Emmitt stopped in his tracks and switched Merlin from listening mode to picture mode. He zoomed in with his phone and snapped a photo of the Robin before it flitted away. Merlin identified the species and gave Emmitt the option to add to his Life List. He added. Then he spent the rest of his outdoor time recording bird sounds and capturing shots of birds in trees. After an hour, his Life List stood at nine.
“Check this out,” he said to his mom when he returned inside. He proudly held out his phone showing the list.
“What am I looking at?”
“It’s my bird list. Every time I find a new species, I add it to the list.”
“Birds? How long have you been doing that?”
“Since I went outside.”
“Are birds cool now? How come you’re interested in birds?”
“I dunno. It’s fun to see how many you can find. I think I could get a pretty big list.”
“Reminds me of that Pokémon game everyone was playing a few years ago. Pokémon Go. People walked around outside collecting Pokémon on their phones.”
“This is different. Birds are real.”
“Hey, I’m not knocking it. Whatever it takes for you to get fresh air.”
Emmitt admired his list and looked up other birds until he knew his friend, Jack, would be home. Jack lived a short walk away on a street that paralleled his own. Emmitt hustled over and found Jack eating a bowl of cereal in his kitchen. He wore a work T-shirt advertising the car wash.
“You gotta check this out. I downloaded that bird app we saw in the videos. I’ve already got nine on my list in like an hour.”
“Is that good?”
“Seems pretty good. I want to see how many more I can get in your yard.”
Jack left his half-filled cereal bowl and followed Emmitt to the shrubs and fruit trees behind the house. Jack quickly downloaded Merlin on his phone and started a Life List of his own. He and Emmitt added the Eastern Wood-Pewee, the American Goldfinch, and the Pileated Woodpecker. Then Jack added some of the same birds already found on Emmitt’s list.
“Hold up, I don’t like you having more than me,” Jack said jealously. “Let’s go back to your house so I can pick up all the ones you already found.”
Jack usually had a story to tell about his job and the dumb things his coworkers did to customer cars. He grew so focused on listening for new bird sounds, he did not say a word on the way to Emmitt’s. When the two finally had identical Life Lists, they walked around the neighborhood until it was dark. They both had eighteen birds by the time they were done.
“If we can add this many every day, in a year we’ll have like 6000,” Emmitt said enthusiastically. “That’s probably a record.”
“Maybe tomorrow we can go to a park after I’m done with work. I’ll drive us. But don’t look for new birds without me.”
Emmitt promised not to do any bird hunting without his friend. This would be something fun they could do together, like the video games they used to play before Jack got the car wash job.
As much as he wanted to, Emmitt avoided opening the Merlin app the next day until Jack got home. They drove to Captain Buck Park and wandering around holding up their phones to capture birdsong. Within the first fifteen minutes, they added the American Redstart, Yellow Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, and Wood Thrush to their collections.
“How come people haven’t thought of finding birds before?” Emmitt asked with fresh enthusiasm. “Birds have always been around.”
“It’s probably because they didn’t have phones and the app until now,” Jack replied matter-of-factly.
Emmitt breathed deeply the smell of cut grass on the park’s lawn. “It’s nice being outside when you have something to do. I guess if people don’t care about nature and stuff, they aren’t going to care about birds.”
“And you do have to be pretty quiet and just listen. Most people I know don’t have the patience for it. My mom and her friends could never keep their mouths shut for long enough.”
“You kind of have to leave birds for people our age.”
The initial burst of bird sightings slowed as the sun got lower in the sky. The boys wondered if another park might be better. Emmitt used his phone to read about eagles and hawks living near Union Lake.
“We should go there.”
“How about we try tomorrow?”
“Same time? After you work?”
“Sure.”
They headed home with their Life Lists at 26 species. Emmitt began rethinking where his list might stand in a year’s time.
The next day, the boys drove to the trailhead for hiking paths along the edge of Union Lake. The lake’s shoreline was surrounded by reeds and long grasses. Thick forests grew a hundred feet from the waterline. As Jack and Emmitt exited the car, they grew excited over a flock of migrating birds flying overhead. They hurried down one of the trails and within minutes added Great Blue Heron and Wood Duck to their Life Lists. Then they followed the trail as it meandered away from the water and into the shadows of the tall trees.
“Are you listening? Do you hear anything?” Jack asked.
“Nothing new.”
“How far should we keep going? Where are the eagles supposed to be?”
“I’m not really sure.”
After another hundred yards on the narrowing trail, the boys reached a couple standing off to one side and staring up at a tree with binoculars. The man and woman both had gray hair. Walking sticks leaned against the tree to support them while hiking. When the couple saw Jack and Emmitt, the woman put her fingers to her lips and said in a whisper, “Would you like to see a Cowbird?”
The boys looked up and raised their phones to try and take a picture. “How do you know it’s a Cowbird?” Emmitt asked quietly.
The woman chuckled confidently. “I’ve been doing this for a lot of years. Is that Merlin you’ve got on your phones?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Everyone’s running around listening for birds with their phones these days,” the woman said with a smile. “They call it birding. We used to call it bird watching. Have you started your list?”
“Yes,” Emmitt replied reluctantly.
“How many birds do you have so far?”
“About thirty,” Emmitt admitted. He did not really want to know, but for some reason he asked, “How about you?”
“Last time I checked we were at 330, but we’ve been at it for years. When you get that many, it’s very hard to add new ones. You learn to appreciate the one’s you’ve already got.”
Emmitt and Jack frowned and stared up at the tree for another minute before one of them mumbled something about needing to go. They walked away toward the direction of their car.
“Kind of sounds like everyone is birding,” Emmitt said in a demoralized voice. “Even old people. I guess it’s not new.”
“Getting up to 100 on your list probably takes a lot of time. We might be too busy to get that far.”
“Yeah, it’s probably not worth it if everyone else is doing it.” Emmitt walked a few steps in silence before saying, “I should tell you about this other app I found. It’s all about mushrooms. You take a picture, and it tells you exactly what kind it is. There must be a thousand different ones and I guarantee no one’s seen them all.” He paused and looked down at the ground. “See, there’s one right there.” He grabbed his phone and said, “Just give me one second.”
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