I have been waiting all Birdability Week to share these!

One of the great joys of birding is that birds absolutely do not care what we are hoping they will do. That is the whole spirit of our Birdability Week Offbeat Photo + Video Contest, and this year’s more than 151 entries made me laugh over and over again.

I love this contest because there is already plenty of space in the birding world for exquisite photography, rare birds, long lenses, perfect light and perfectly timed shots. We wanted to make some space for everything else too.

And WOW did you all understand the assignment.

Our Grand Prize winner is Sujata Roy for “Speck-Of-Blue.”

I added two more events to the Birdability Week map today - a few days into the week itself!

That brings us to 210 accessible and inclusive events and outings for Birdability Week 2026.

Two hundred and ten!

I have spent a lot of time with this map over the past few months. I have read every event submission, looked at trail descriptions, fixed addresses, asked follow-up questions, gotten excited about benches and accessible parking and creative programming, and watched new pins appear in places I hoped we might reach someday.

And somewhere along the way, I realized I was looking at something much more interesting than a really big event calendar. I was looking at 210 different answers to the question: What could birding look like if we stopped assuming everyone had to do it the same way?

And people have come up with some REALLY good answers.

One of the most useful things we can learn from conversations about invisible and non-apparent disabilities is that people should not have to identify themselves as disabled before we think about access.

If we wait until someone discloses a diagnosis and asks for an accommodation, much of the responsibility has already been placed on the disabled person.

There are so many things we can do before anyone has to ask.

We can include clear accessibility information in event descriptions. We can tell people how far we plan to travel, what the trail surface is like, whether there is seating, where bathrooms are located, how long the program lasts, and whether people are welcome to leave early or take breaks. We can provide chairs without deciding who appears to need one. We can build rest into programs. We can offer captions and ASL interpretation. We can provide multiple ways to participate.

And we can make room for birding from a bench, a car, a window, a backyard, a balcony, a hospital room, or a bed.

Birdsong By The Seasons: A Year of Listening To Birds

By Donald Kroodsma

Reviewed by Susan Glass

I’ve read Birdsong several times now, and once I followed it through its calendar year, reading just one chapter a month, the January chapter in January, the February chapter in February and so on. Doing this heightened my appreciation for the joy and scholarship found here, allowing me to slow down and live each of my own bird months more deeply than I would have otherwise.

Birdability Week 2026 is coming up October 19 through 25, and we would love for you to help us celebrate by hosting an accessible and inclusive birding outing, gathering, or event in your community.

At its heart, Birdability Week is a celebration of accessible birding. It is an opportunity to uplift disabled birders and birders with other health concerns, strengthen relationships between disability and birding communities, and create spaces that center access and inclusion.

Hosting an event can also help your bird club, Audubon chapter, nature center, park, community organization, or other group learn what accessibility and inclusion look like in practice.

And we really do mean practice.

None of us will create an event that is accessible to every person. Instead, our job is to think intentionally about barriers, remove or reduce the barriers we can, provide clear information about the barriers that remain, listen to participants, and keep learning - together.

When I first wrote a review about Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing, for our state ornithological union’s newsletter, I kept returning to a moment at The Biggest Week in American Birding that I also shared at our Birdability Book Club discussion. I had seen the author and actress moving around the festival as I tabled for Birdability, then later that week, I saw her on the Magee Marsh boardwalk, binoculars up, looking into the trees with everyone else. I loved that moment so much. Despite her fame, she really was just another birder hoping for a chance to get a good look at a warbler.

The Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi, holds a special place in Birdability's history.

In 2024, it became the first Birdability Outreach Program (BOP) site, helping Birdability explore what it looks like to bring accessible birding, nature connection, and community building directly to people who may face barriers to participating in traditional birding activities. The program was made possible in part through support from the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation's Quality of Life Grant, which helped Birdability and local partners create opportunities for residents to engage with birds and nature in meaningful and accessible ways.

Since then, Birdability Captains Amanda Douglas and Jessica Martin of Audubon Delta have helped the program grow into something far beyond a series of bird outings. What they have created is a welcoming space where residents can connect with birds, creativity, conservation, and each other.

When Bev Gatliff moved from Florida to California in 2017, she brought with her a lifelong love of birds. What she did not know yet was that Birdability would help reconnect her to birding, community, and joy during a time when changing mobility and health needs had begun to reshape her life.

Today, Bev is one of the driving forces behind accessible birding efforts with Monterey Audubon Society, helping to build Birdability outings, mindful bird walks, senior center programming, and growing opportunities for birding by ear in Monterey County.

Birdability Week 2026 - October 19 through 25, 2026

Bird Where You Are

Bird Where You Are means watching birds from your kitchen window. Listening from your favorite park bench. Exploring an accessible trail. Birding from your car. Spending time on your porch or balcony. Sitting outside during a lunch break. Noticing the birds from bed during a health flare. Birding in a group or by yourself.

It also means birding at your own pace, in your own way, and at your own level of experience. It means loving the common birds just as much as the rarities.

Because if you enjoy wild birds in any way, you are a birder. And you belong here.

For Birdability Week 2026, we are celebrating the many ways people connect with birds and nature while inviting even more people to discover that there is a place for them in the birding community.

When the second annual Blind Birder Bird-a-Thon wrapped up, the numbers were impressive.

Almost 300 registered participants joined from more than 10 countries and territories. Participants represented 35 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, Canada, Venezuela, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and Mexico. Together, participants heard and identified 355 bird species across the globe. Community events took place across North America and far beyond.

But when participants gathered for the wrap-up celebration call, the numbers were only a tiny bit of the story. Participants talked about joy and learning and the birds they heard (including a Wedge-tailed Shearwater, which was breeding near the hotel where one participant was staying in Hawaii!). Most of all, though, they talked about belonging.

Birding has been part of my PTSD journey for more than 30 years. This June, for PTSD Awareness Month, we're exploring the connections between trauma, disability, and birds, including why PTSD is an important access consideration, how trauma can change the way we experience birding, and what research tells us about the benefits of spending time with birds. Most importantly, we're reminding ourselves that there are many ways to bird, and every one of them belongs.

We are delighted to welcome Maggie Smith as Birdability’s Outreach Program Coordinator! Maggie joined us at the beginning of the year and has been working with rehabilitation hospitals and programs around the country to implement birding programs for people living with spinal cord injuries. Maggie brings birding joy and an infectious smile to everything she does, and we can’t wait for you to meet her. Read her introductory blog here!

There are some people whose presence changes the shape of a community simply because of how they move through it. Marcia Obara was one of those people.

Marcia was a longtime champion for accessible birding, a retired nurse, a past Birdability Captain, a Certified Access Leader, and someone who quietly and steadily helped countless people feel that they belonged outdoors. She led accessible birding outings in Tucson with care and attention to what people actually needed: smooth trails, shade, benches, accessible restrooms, a pace that welcomed everybody, and space for joy in birds.

This article, Seeing Further: Blind Birders Advance New Frontiers of Learning and Discovery is reprinted with permission from the birding in the 2020s issue of the ABA Magazine, Birding. Many thanks to the ABA and Ted Floyd, Birding Editor.

On May 18, 2025, the first-ever national Blind Birder Bird-a-Thon took place in 34 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, as well as Canada and Venezuela. Species recorded included everything from fluting Wood Thrushes to squeaky Bananaquits to whistling Venezuelan Troupials. This event was a signature moment to draw people who are blind or partially sighted to the outdoors and give new meaning to the word birdwatching—that birding is not only about the kaleidoscope of colors seen through binoculars but also an auditory adventure of discovery guided by sound rather than sight.

I was one of those blind birders. I have Usher syndrome, an inherited retinal disease that causes progressive hearing and sight loss, the latter due to retinitis pigmentosa (RP).

This blog explores how accessibility in birding begins not only with physical spaces but with the words we use to describe them. While barriers like steep trails or lack of seating may be visible, many people encounter uncertainty much earlier when event descriptions lack clear, specific access information. Thoughtful, detailed language helps people with disabilities and other health concerns understand what to expect and decide whether an experience works for them. We reflect on how language shapes belonging, from avoiding limiting or outdated terms to expanding our understanding of what birding can mean. Rather than focusing on getting every word “right,” the invitation is to listen, stay open to learning, and use language as an ongoing practice of care that helps more people feel welcomed into the birding community.

There is a particular kind of anticipation that builds when migration is happening and birds are on the move. The days get longer here in the northern hemisphere, the soundscape shifts, and if you listen closely, you can literally hear the birds coming.

We are just weeks away from the 2nd Annual Global Blind Birder Bird-a-Thon, happening May 3 and 4, 2026. What we are hearing already is not just birdsong, though! It is community and preparation, and even belonging taking shape.

This event was created by and for blind and low vision birders, and it continues to grow into something both beautifully simple and deeply powerful. The bird-a-thon is a reminder that birding is not just something we see, but also something we hear. And when we are at our best, it’s also something we feel and something we share.

In the United States, 1 in 3 people will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime. For many of us, that means cancer is not an abstract statistic. It is something that touches our families, our friends, and often our own lives.

In a new blog post, Birdability board member Julie Euber shares her personal story of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis and navigating chemotherapy, uncertainty, and recovery. Along the way, birds remained a steady presence. Sometimes that meant sitting quietly on a porch watching visitors at a feeder. Other times it meant resting at a picnic table with a friend and watching the antics of a Cooper’s Hawk.

What this story reminds us is something we talk about often at Birdability. Birding does not have to look one way. It can happen from a backyard chair, a paved path, a balcony, or a quiet moment outside when energy and stamina are limited.

Birds offer a throughline. They show up for every version of us.

As 2025 comes to a close, many of our conversations with Birdability Captains and our broader Birdability community have focused on reflecting on the last year and what comes next. These conversations were with people doing the day-to-day work of access and inclusion in their own communities. Across year-end meetings and discussions, the same ideas came up again and again.

Birdability is about community and shared action for accessibility.

Throughout 2025, we saw astonishing growth in interesting places.

Applications will open soon for the third year of the Let’s Go Birding Internship, formerly known as the Birdability Internship. As we prepare to welcome a new cohort of interns for spring/summer 2026, we are taking a moment to celebrate what this program has already made possible and the people who have shaped it with care, creativity, and deep commitment to access. Developed in partnership with Environment for the Americas and the National Park Service, Let’s Go Birding is rooted in the idea that birding and national parks should be accessible to everyone, including disabled people and folks with other health concerns.

Everyone deserves a way into the story of birds. Not simply the chance to identify a species, but the chance to feel what Andrew J. Lewis describes so clearly in this piece we are reprinting below. A shift in attention or a deeper form of listening or even a sense of belonging that does not depend on eyesight or mobility or any single way of taking in the world. This essay, first published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and generously shared here with permission from them and the author, speaks directly to the heart of our Blind Birder Bird-a-Thon Community Conversations and to the many ways people with disabilities and other health concerns build their own pathways to joy in nature.