May 19, 2026 · 24 min · 12 segments
Rarity can make a bird feel precious, but it can also change how we see everything else. Author and science journalist Justine Hausheer shares her thinking about common birds, endangered species and…
I grew up in Florida in the United States, and our house backed onto a lake.
And so we had things like armadillos, raccoons, snapping turtles, and, like, dozens of bird species in the backyard.
And so sort of noticing them and observing them, that's just been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
It wasn't until my early 20s when I became what I would call a birder, or started considering myself a birder.
At the time, I was living in New York City doing my master's degree in science journalism, and I was just miserable because I did not have easy access to nature, especially as a poor grad student.
So I signed up for a weekly guided bird walk in Central Park run by the Natural History Museum.
And so every Thursday, I, I got up before dawn, I got on the subway with my binoculars, and I took it north to the park.
So in the US, we have these really distinct, like, seasonal migratory pulses, one in spring, one in autumn, where you've got tremendous numbers of birds moving across the continent, some coming, you know, traveling distances from South America to the Canadian Arctic.
Right in the middle of the biggest cities in the world, this concrete jumble, they have a fabulous birding hotspot.
You know, spending time outdoors, the fact that it's kind of like a scavenger hunt to see what you can find, and then a bit of a puzzle to figure out what you're looking at.
I was lucky enough to visit Central Park just before COVID, and I still remember being amazed by how much wildlife was packed into the middle of New York City.
And I think, you know, because there's so many people in such a small space, you'll see things on, like, Instagram where a, a northern saw-whet owl, or I think the one I saw a couple weeks ago was an American woodcock showing up, and it's just doing its thing in, in the foliage, and there are about 500 people staring at it [laughs].
So yeah, it, it was a really, um, interesting place to learn how to become a birder and not what you would sort of typically expect, especially as someone who grew up and, uh, spent a lot more of their life in more wild places.
I grew up in Florida in the United States, and our house backed onto a lake.
And so we had things like armadillos, raccoons, snapping turtles, and, like, dozens of bird species in the backyard.
And so sort of noticing them and observing them, that's just been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
It wasn't until my early 20s when I became what I would call a birder, or started considering myself a birder.
At the time, I was living in New York City doing my master's degree in science journalism, and I was just miserable because I did not have easy access to nature, especially as a poor grad student.
So I signed up for a weekly guided bird walk in Central Park run by the Natural History Museum.
And so every Thursday, I, I got up before dawn, I got on the subway with my binoculars, and I took it north to the park.
So in the US, we have these really distinct, like, seasonal migratory pulses, one in spring, one in autumn, where you've got tremendous numbers of birds moving across the continent, some coming, you know, traveling distances from South America to the Canadian Arctic.
Right in the middle of the biggest cities in the world, this concrete jumble, they have a fabulous birding hotspot.
You know, spending time outdoors, the fact that it's kind of like a scavenger hunt to see what you can find, and then a bit of a puzzle to figure out what you're looking at.
I was lucky enough to visit Central Park just before COVID, and I still remember being amazed by how much wildlife was packed into the middle of New York City.
And I think, you know, because there's so many people in such a small space, you'll see things on, like, Instagram where a, a northern saw-whet owl, or I think the one I saw a couple weeks ago was an American woodcock showing up, and it's just doing its thing in, in the foliage, and there are about 500 people staring at it [laughs].
So yeah, it, it was a really, um, interesting place to learn how to become a birder and not what you would sort of typically expect, especially as someone who grew up and, uh, spent a lot more of their life in more wild places.
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