Take up birdwatching

“I also birdwatch for anxiety. I started with $25 binos, no field guide, and occasionally whipped out Merlin. eBird is fun to see what birds are around, but making checklists can be a bit intimidating at first. [...] The most exciting part of bird watching for me is the changing of the seasons. It's like different theme packs. Seeing certain species come and go, alongside the growth cycle of plants, brings color to my life. Paying more attention to nature has greatly grounded me day to day, and the more time passes, the more you learn little by little, the more enriching it is.”

“I only got into birdwatching earlier this year because I took up smoking on my front porch due to stress & for the first time was able to appreciate the variety of birds we have & how cute they are. I started being more intentional about keeping my bird feeders filled but it wasn’t until I came on this sub & discovered the Merlin app that I realized just how exciting it was to identify birds by their call/song & see how many different birds we had around. I’m not smoking anymore but still watching birds & saving up for a nice pair of binoculars”

“Yesterday, I went birdwatching for the first time, armed with a pair of binoculars, a camera and an app for bird identification. I really anjoyed this first contact and I'm looking forward for the next ocassion! It was a sunny day and the area was crowded, but since this space is a special protection area (SPA) for the conservation of wild birds we got to see a fair amount of life. It is located on Spanish Atlantic coast. We watched a common sandpiper (1st and 2nd pictures), which here we call 'bilurico'; a couple of nice mallards and a group of cormorants swimming and fishing (we thought they looked like an artistic swimming team!).”