MONTPELIER — On a recent Saturday afternoon at the North Branch Nature Center, Community Engagement Coordinator Luis Gonzalez led about a dozen people into the woods on a bird walk.
The group followed the center’s Universal Access Trail, a wide and flat packed gravel path.
“You heard that one?” Gonzalez asked, pausing on the trail. “Can anybody tell me what it is? What does it look like? Use your binoculars.”
As the group shouted out guesses (“A crow or a raven?” “A turkey vulture?”), an American Sign Language interpreter signed along.
The walk was one of several offered throughout the afternoon as part of an inclusive birding event. Nick Parker, a birder from central Vermont who is hard of hearing, organized it.
Parker volunteers with Birdability, a national nonprofit working to make the birding community and the outdoors more welcoming, inclusive, safe and accessible for everybody. Parker said the afternoon was the first Birdability event ever hosted in Vermont.
“I would love to see more hard-of-hearing and deaf people out in birding,” Parker said. “I’m certainly not the only one — I know there are other people that have been working on this sort of thing — but I want to see what I can do.”
Parker started birding relatively recently. Last year, he started his life list, which is a record birders keep of every species they’ve identified.
“My life list right now is at 211,” he said. “That’s all Vermont birds.”
Parker said he got into birding in part because of his disability.
“I sort of was challenging myself like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna be an avid birder. What does that look like for me?’” he said. He started learning to identify birds by their visual characteristics, known as field marks.
About a year ago, he went on his first group bird walk with an ASL interpreter. The increase in language access helped him process what his fellow birders were pointing out.
“I didn’t realize how much I’d been missing,” he said. “I mean, I had a feeling, but [having an interpreter] was just really fantastic, and it did feel like full access.”
Bird walk participant Mary Essex, who is deaf, also appreciates having an ASL interpreter on group bird walks. She said interpreters don’t sign bird calls, but instead help her communicate with the rest of the group.
“When the facilitators are talking and giving some education, I learn something myself, and sometimes I even have something to add,” she said. “I don’t want to keep that information to myself, so if there’s an interpreter present, then I can share the knowledge I have as well.”
Like Parker, Essex identifies birds visually, looking for flight patterns, size, coloration and feeding behaviors. She got into birding through her friend, Jerry Berrier, who is blind and who advocates for inclusive birding with Birdability and Mass Audubon.
When she was starting out, Essex said, she and Berrier would team up to identify birds on bird walks. “He would do the auditory part, and then I would confirm it visually,” she said.
Jude Hawthorne, another bird walk participant, started birding during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We put out a bird feeder and got a bird book, and then it was just really fun to collect all the different breeds,” they said.
Hawthorne uses a wheelchair, and relies on accessible trails like this one to get out in the woods.
“Disabled people are left out of so many spaces because we’re not thought of,” they said. “The outdoors is, like, right here, and we’re still left out of it.”
Hawthorne said they appreciate that accessible trails are popping up around Vermont, like the new trail at the Pratt Refuge in Duxbury that opened this summer. “The extra steps that people do to make it accessible is so massively appreciated,” they said. “Every little bit can make a big difference for folks.”
Parker wants everyone to be included in nature. In addition to advocating for birders with disabilities, he also advocates for queer birders. “As an older trans person, this is not a very friendly world to live in right now,” he said. “But when I’m birding, I feel more myself. I don’t feel like I’m having to put on a face or a mask for anybody.”
Ultimately, Parker said, his favorite thing about birding isn’t the birds — it’s the people.
“I get most excited about people getting excited about birding,” he said. “It’s always really fascinating if I see something new, but if I’m seeing other people experience that, and getting excited about that, then I feel excited.”
Now, Parker is collaborating with other birding groups across the state to host more accessible events.
“I try to be the change you want to see in the world,” he said. “People are doing fantastic stuff all over the U.S. and the world, so I think I would just love to do more of that.”