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Celebrating Female Bird Day
Educating people on female bird ID.
© Kelly Colgan Azar
In 2019, several co-workers at the National Audubon Society formed a team for the World Series of Birding that focused on identifying female birds. Called the Galbatrosses, they sought to highlight how female birds have been understudied and unfairly written off as quieter and less interesting. Since then, the Galbatrosses have led events about IDing female birds and held the first Female Bird Day over Memorial Day weekend in 2020. Learn how to participate in this year’s Female Bird Day here.
BirdNote®
Celebrating Female Bird Day
Written by Conor Gearin
This is BirdNote.
In 2019, several co-workers at the National Audubon Society formed a team for the World Series of Birding that focused on identifying female birds. They sought to highlight how female birds have been understudied and unfairly written off as quieter and less interesting. And they had the perfect name for themselves: The Galbatrosses.
[Baltimore Oriole female song, ML 342317931]
While finding a big list of female birds wasn’t easy, the team impressed many other birders, says Galbatross member Purbita Saha.
Purbita Saha: It actually raised a lot of excitement among even the veteran World Series competitors. They were sending us texts about where we could find female owls and such. It just really sparked this desire to go out and always look for female birds in us.
Since then, the Galbatrosses have led events about IDing female birds, which often goes beyond simple differences in color to behavior and sounds. And they held the first Female Bird Day over Memorial Day weekend in 2020. From there, the project kept growing, says Galbatross member Joanna Wu.
Joanna Wu: The effort really gained a lot more traction than we expected it to. My favorite thing about this project is just talking to people and having them have a lightbulb moment of, “Right, this is information where we’re effectively missing half of the birds’ biodiversity.”
[Baltimore Oriole female song, ML 342317931]
Learn how to participate in this year’s Female Bird Day this weekend on our website, BirdNote dot org. I’m Conor Gearin.
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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. Baltimore Oriole ML 342317931 recorded by J. Ellerbusch.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote May 2022 Narrator: Conor Gearin
ID# fbd-01-2022-05-28 fbd-01
Conor Gearin
Writer NarratorSights & Sounds
