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The Skatebirder
A professional skateboarder brings along binoculars
© Wendy Miller
Dave Mull is not your typical birder — he's a professional skateboarder, or a “skatebirder” as he puts it. He brings binoculars with him when he skateboards and doesn’t mind putting his board down to check out a bird. But the birds aren't really a distraction for Dave. Tuning into his surroundings, including the birds, helps him stay in the zone and provides inspiration for tricks.
BirdNote®
The Skatebirder
Written by Mark Bramhill
Mark Bramhill: This is BirdNote.
[Bouncy bassline begins, “Foundation, Donation” by Dave Mull]
Dave Mull is an avid birder and a professional skateboarder — or "skatebirder," as he likes to say. And he definitely turns some heads:
Dave Mull: If I'm skateboarding and then I pull out my binoculars and start birding, some people see that and they’re like, just totally taken aback. They're like, “Why does he have binoculars? And what the heck is he looking at?” Usually people just laugh outright. But then if they're nearby, I'll be like, “You gotta check this out,” and I'll let them take a look through the bins.
Mark Bramhill: That’s hip birder lingo for binoculars…
Dave Mull: And they're amazed. They're like, what, how did you know that was there? It's really fun to pique people's interests like that really unexpectedly.
And sometimes it's right in the middle of me trying to film a trick. So the people filming, you know, they might get impatient, but they know at this point I'm obsessed with birds as well as skateboarding. So if I see, like, a couple of Hooded Orioles behind me when I'm about to go try a trick, I'm gonna put my board down and like, check out what those orioles are doing.
[Hooded Oriole song]
Mark Bramhill: And the birds aren't really a distraction for Dave — they help him stay in the zone.
Dave Mull: In skateboarding, you'll get a lot of distractions while you're trying a trick, say like traffic or passersby. When I'm skating, I actually gain inspiration from my surroundings and try to take what I can from it to actually encourage me. You know, the birds are flitting from one tree to the next like it's nothing. And I try to imagine I can do a little bit of that, you know, even if it's just hopping for a fraction of a second in the air on my skateboard.
Mark Bramhill: For BirdNote, I’m Mark Bramhill.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Hooded Oriole song ML45180 recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote January 2023
Narrator: Mark Bramill
ID# mulld-02-2023-01-18 mulld-02
