Gotta watch ’em all: The Birding Club studies Princeton’s local fowl

It takes some nerve to start a club at Princeton, especially if you’re a freshman. But that didn’t curb the passion that Graham Read ’15 and Cate Shulgina ’15 share for birdwatching. The two banded together to form the Princeton Birding Club almost immediately after arriving on campus.

On their most recent trip to Mercer County Park Northwest — about 20 minutes from Princeton — the club was on the lookout for kestrels, mockingbirds and any other species they happened to come across. “I’ve heard from people hunting here that there’s an owl,” says Ben Schweinhart GS, a member of the club.

Even as a newcomer tagging along, I managed to catch priceless glimpses of some beautiful birds. On a stop at Lake Carnegie, I peered through one of Schweinhart’s expensive birding scopes to see a wood duck. In the county park, the group worked together to “flush out” a few meadowlarks running around in the brush.

“Some people keep lifelists ... of every bird they’ve seen,” said Read. “It’s like Pokemon,” added Shulgina, whose lifelist includes over 500 birds that she’s sighted since she got into birding at the age of nine.

For her, birding holds a lot of allure. “I guess it’s the thrill of seeking out something that’s really rare,” she explained. There’s just something special about standing in a field as a massive flock of grackles flies overhead.

The birders with me tended to notice and appreciate small details in their surroundings that I would have missed. “What I love about birdwatching is that you see things that people overlook,” Shulgina said.

The County Park area contains a unique blending of two species of chickadees. A very thin line divides the territories of the black cap chickadee in the north from the Carolina chickadee’s terrain in the south, and only in a certain stretch of the park can hybrids of the two species be observed.

Princeton birdwatchers exhibit all levels of enthusiasm. For most of the group, birding is a fun hobby and an excellent way to get outdoors. But some members go deeper; most of the grad students in the club follow online birding forums, and a few have even taken trips abroad just to catch sight of exotic birds.

Lena Samsonenko GS has co-guided tours in Belize, Panama, Guatemala and Puerto Rico, to name a few. “Many places ... have endemics, meaning [the birds] are found nowhere else on Earth ... So a lot of people are interested and pay money to have guides take them [on tours]. Ecotourism is a huge industry.”

She also explained the environmentalist aspect of birdwatching. “Habitat conservation is usually what we’re after, because instead of just protecting one bird, [we] can protect many.”

Conversation was regularly punctuated with interjections as someone spotted a bird and called out its species name, as well as stretches of silence when a birdcall was detected.

Currently, the club consists of mostly freshmen and grad students. “[I met Cate] in MOL 215, and we got a bunch of our freshman friends interested and then sent an email to the Botany Club, which got forwarded to Ben,” says Read about the unusual demographics of the group.

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From the perspective of a non-birder, birdwatching involves a lot of trekking through fields and waiting for the right moment when a bird comes out. “Birding requires some stamina. All my friends are like, ‘I want to go birding with you,’ and I’m like, ‘No you don’t,’ ” remarked Shulgina.

Prospective members shouldn’t be fazed, however. The club is still open to new applicants regardless of experience. “As a person who doesn’t really know anything about birds ... there’s a good variety of people who can help,” said Alisa Kroutikova ’15.

“We have really experienced people who actually major in these topics, and then there are people like me who are amateur birders,” said Anna Cardinal ’15.