As the sun creeps out from behind the clouds, and flower buds begin to open into blossoms, visiting birds fill Northwestern’s soundscape with their beautiful Spring songs.
[sound effect: birds chirping]
One May morning, I went on a Spring Migration Bird Walk with NU Birders, a bird-watching group on campus, and met many of the birds passing through Evanston for the Spring season.
[nat sound: TBD clips from the birdwalk]
After the bird walk, I talked with RTVF Professor Jacob Smith, one of the co-founders of NU Birders.
JACOB SMITH: You know, I was into birding when I was a kid, but it was actually getting the job here at Northwestern and starting to develop a class on media and the environment that kind of brought it back. So that’s when I got very excited about reconnecting with birds, and especially bird migration. We are on a big hot migration pathway that leads right along the lake, and we got lucky this week. We just had to walk into the middle of that courtyard and there’s all these birds everywhere.
I also spoke with Maggie Olson, a Northwestern alum who led the bird walk. With binoculars and birding guide in hand, she brought our forty-person group through South campus, which was bustling with small, migratory birds.
MAGGIE OLSON: I had three lifers. So in bird watching, a lifer is a bird you’ve never seen before in your life. So, the Bay-Breasted Warbler was a lifer for me, the Nashville Warbler was a lifer for me, and the Blackburnian Warbler was a lifer for me. I think there was an estimated, like, truly a million birds migrating that morning. You might see them for the next week, but then they’ll be gone because everybody’s kind of on their own timeline. So this is a great time for warbler season. This week is predicted to be peak migration, so it was perfect timing for the birdwalk.
Spring migration brings millions of new birds to Evanston every year. But, that doesn’t mean Spring is the only time to go bird watching. Year-round, Evanston hosts hundreds of species of birds, making it a perfect spot for bird enthusiasts to live. Here’s Jack Hirschle, a sophomore in Weinberg and an Evanston native. He has spent his whole life around Evanston birds.
JACK HIRSCHLE: The most biodiverse group of animals in Evanston are birds. I remember, you know, as I got my first birding guide, like, looking through this thing and being like, “I’ve never seen this before in my life.” And then I’d start paying attention to the trees around me, and I’d see those birds. And it kind of made me realize that they were there the whole time. I just wasn’t looking, you know?
And it’s amazing what birds you’ll find once you do start looking. Here are some favorite sightings:
HIRSCHLE: One of them is a Baltimore Oriole, which is my favorite bird around here. They’re a lot rarer than the other ones, but they’re unmistakable and just beautiful, beautiful birds.
SMITH: I remember once there was a great big Green Heron just, like, sitting in a tree on campus. These big, beautiful exotic waterbirds and it’s just sitting there, you know.
OLSON: I had gotten up one morning at 6:30 and gone to Perkins Woods, which is about a mile and a half west of campus, and some woman comes up and she goes, “Are you here for the Yellow Billed Cuckoo?” And I was like, “Um, I’ve never seen that bird. I don’t know what that bird is.” So it took us a while. We heard it, we found it. And then I heard something that sounded similar, but wasn’t the same. And I looked to my left and there was a Black Billed Cuckoo, which has these red eyes and is very different, and it’s endangered in the state of Illinois. So that’s like probably the first time and last time I’m ever gonna see that bird.
But while Chicago is one of the best cities for bird watching, it is also one of the most dangerous cities for birds.
SMITH: We’re right in this migratory pathway, and many of the birds fly along the coast of the lake. But that also means it’s dangerous for them because they’ll bump into these glass sided buildings.
OLSON: Chicago a couple years ago, I think 2019, was rated the number one worst city for bird strikes. What a student can do is, you can call the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. They have volunteers that will come out and rescue the bird. If the bird is alive, they’ll kind of keep it in a paper bag until it’s ready to fly again. Or if it has something like a wing is broken, um, or another injury, they might take it to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Center to get some rehab opportunities with their vets there. If the bird is dead, they’ll take it to the Field Museum where it will be used for research purposes.
These deadly bird strikes are preventable. In 2023, one of Chicago’s hotspots for bird collisions was the McCormick Place Lakeside Center. So, in 2024 they installed a dotted film on all their glass windows. Since then, they have seen a more than 95% decrease in bird strikes.
SMITH: The first rule of ecology is everything is connected to everything else. So as soon as you open your heart to the little birds and you start paying attention, then you start looking at your landscape differently. You start looking at the built environment differently. How does this affect not just me and my classes, but what about the birds? You know, there’s been, this has been a migratory pathway for thousands and thousands of years.
[nat sound: birds chirping]
HIRSCHLE: They’re such beautiful creatures and you know, we always take them for granted ’cause they’re always around us. But, they are pollinators, they’re insect controllers, they are key parts of our ecosystem that we should all appreciate, I think.
OLSON: To name things is to honor them, and I think about that every time I go birdwatching. And I think it really adds to that appreciation and connection that I think people so often miss, especially living in a city.
So if you’re out and about this Spring looking for a way to unwind, consider downloading the free Merlin Bird ID app and renting a pair of binoculars from the Northwestern Library. You never know what you might discover by turning your eyes and ears towards the treetops.
For WNUR News, I’m Sofi Pascua.
Web Sources:
“A Commitment to Bird Conservation at McCormick Place” https://www.mccormickplace.com/birds/
