Winter offers new perspective to year-round hobby
A backyard retirement hobby grew over the years to become a daily habit on Western Home Communities’ south campus.
Dave and Suzanne Eastman make it a point to enjoy birding every week, whether at their townhome, at local birding hot spots or while on vacation. Even a visit to the Grosse Aquatic and Wellness Center is an opportunity to visit with other residents about recent observations.
“Many of us enjoy watching nature in a variety of ways and it is fun to see all the feeders and birdhouses in our neighborhood,” Dave says.
And that’s where Dave’s passion for birding began, in their backyard when he retired in 2008. His first real attempt to identify and record birds was during the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, which takes place Feb. 18-21 this year.
Since then, he has connected with other experienced birders through the Prairie Rapids Audubon Society and the Iowa Ornithologists Union. Suzanne's interest started about the same time but she was only mildly interested in the "pretty birds.” Her interest and knowledge increased when she started photographing them.
Now Dave and Suzanne bird together often, especially on trips. “Birds are everywhere you go and you see them more when they become a focus of a trip,” Dave said. Over the years, they have been to parks in Canada, New England, the Northeast and Southwest U.S., Alaska, the Caribbean and annually to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area in northern Minnesota.
While at home, Dave tries to bird a little each day, whether for five minutes or most of the day. It’s a year-round activity and in the winter they do back road and feeder birding to observe year-round residents like the blue jay, Northern cardinal and downy woodpecker, as well as migrating birds that overwinter here like the dark-eyed junco and American tree sparrow.
Since moving to their townhome in 2017, Dave and Suzanne have identified 72 different species of birds on the Western Home Communities campus and surrounding area. Some of the undeveloped fields nearby have had breeding grassland birds like Eastern meadowlark, Savannah sparrow, grasshopper sparrow and even a bobolink blackbird one year.
Start a bird watching hobby
It’s easy to get started bird watching with an inexpensive pair of binoculars and an old Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds. Here are other sources of information recommended by Dave and Suzanne:
Prairie Rapids Audubon Society
GoPRAS.org
Iowa Ornithologists Union
IowaBirds.org
Cornell University Lab of Ornithology
AllAboutBirds.org
Cornell Lab, Audubon and Birds Canada
BirdCount.org
