Birding for Beginners Spring 2025-Field trips on Sundays

Nurture your love and knowledge of birds with a beginner’s birding class designed to connect you with the birding community and improve your skills in bird identification. We will spend quality time observing and discussing birds and their behavior, to build your understanding of the sights, sounds, behaviors, and natural history of a selection of our feathered friends.

This is a five-week class which will be divided into two sections: online on Thursday evenings 6:30 to 8 pm and in-person field trips on Sundays 8-10 am.

Each online class will include lectures and discussions with a panel of local birders. We’ll talk about why we bird, and we'll get into the tools and skills birders use to collect observations. We’ll talk about the places we’ll go, the species we’ll see, and why birds want to be there. Each participant will receive an optional “ID assignment” to perform in the field. In field trips, we’ll employ all of our senses to experience and record the birds in our midst. In the end, you'll have about 100 new birds in your brain!

We hope that in this class you’ll connect with nature and birds, with yourself, and with other birders. We welcome a diverse learning community. Let us know if you have access challenges and need assistance.

Binoculars are a must. Loaners will be available. You should definitely have a notebook and a smartphone if you use one. Carpooling will be encouraged, especially when the trips are not bike/transit-friendly.

Recording of each Zoom session will be available to class participants for a limited period of time.

Spring 2025 Course

Week       Online       Sat     OR      Sun           Theme

1               April 10     none            none       What is a bird?
2              April 17    April 19        April 20    How birds vary I
3              April 24    April 26        April 27     How birds vary II
4              May 1      May 3          May 4     Birds and Habitat
5             May 8      May 10         May 11    Tools and modes
6            May 15       none           May 18     What’s next and Birding Blitz

In order to maintain leader to student ratios, we encourage students to select either Saturday or Sunday and not jump between the two. 

$150 per person