Blind Birding Takes Flight 
There’s an “Aha!” moment when you mention blind birding to those folks who know the difference between an Eastern Towhee and an American Robin. It’s that moment when the avid birder realizes that the sense they use most often in their sport is not seeing, but hearing.
Instead of binoculars, digiscopes and field guides, blind or visually impaired birders use reference CDs, mini cassette recorders and sighted tour guides to identify different birds by their sounds. For the sightless birdwatcher, a bird’s song or call is as valuable a tool as the color of the bird’s eye ring, feathers and breast is to the sighted birder. Despite obstacles such as a dearth of volunteers and lack of transportation, blind birders have learned to use these listening tools to gain invaluable insights into nature and what it means to experience a rich personal life.
“It opened up my world,” says Gladie Cruz, 27, a birder from Edinburg, Texas. “I thought it was just going to be an interesting, fun activity… [but] it has helped me improve my self-confidence and helped me come out of my depression.”
Blinded at age 14 by cancerous tumors that damaged her optic nerves, Cruz says that her life before birding was very limited. Not only did she have a hard time finding activities, but also it was difficult for her to meet and connect with new people. A student studying rehabilitation services at the University of Texas-Pan American, Cruz is now part of a group of pioneering blind birders who have taken their sport to a new level. Three years ago, Cruz and others in her birding club convinced the organizers of the world famous Great Texas Birding Classic to start a division for blind birders. The Outta-Sight Song Birder Tournament took flight, with three teams of blind and blindfolded birders being guided through the birding mecca of the Rio Grande Valley in search of as many birds in the subtropical region as they could hear. Last year, the top group identified 42 species by sound in 12 hours.
“It actually fits in well with this tournament, and it gives us an opportunity to serve a group that maybe had not been included in recreational activities in the past,” says Shelly Plante, nature tourism coordinator for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “As a state agency, we want to engage groups of people in recreation and outdoor actives, and our goal is to always look to expand who those groups are.”
The groups that bird only by ear join the roughly 350 birders of different ages and abilities at the yearly tournament, which takes place this month in April. But it’s not just the Outta-Sighters who bird by listening. Experienced birders will detect and identify many more birds by sound than by sight, says Joshua Rose, program director for the Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park in Mission, Texas, headquarters of the World Birding Center. For example, the Eastern Towhee can be identified by his song, “Drink your teeeeee!”, while the American Robin can be identified by his song, “Cheerily, cheer-up, cheerio!”
As a general naturalist, Rose says that as he walks, he is often looking down at the ground for insects, plants and reptiles, and is birding primarily by ear, anyway. Because vocal displays are the primary means of communication for birds, it’s the bird songs and calls, along with wing flaps or wing flutters, and even the drumming of a woodpecker’s beak against a tree, that can be the best and only clue used to identify birds. That’s true whether the winged creatures are visiting your backyard birdfeeder or flying along the Georgia coast. Birds produce a variety of sounds to communicate with flock members, mates, potential mates, neighbors and family members. These sounds, produced by the syrinx, the bird’s vocal organ, vary from short, simple call notes to long, complex songs.
Additionally, those who can hear and identify these sounds may have an advantage over sighted birders. Those birders who can see but who have hearing loss may have a more difficult time in the field. “Not only are many [bird] species more easily heard than seen, some can only be identified by sound because they are visually identical to each other,” Rose says.
“The best analogy I can use is that when you start birding, it’s about 80 percent visual and 20 percent audio,” says Jim Booker, naturalist at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. “I’ve been a birdwatcher for 28 years and as you get more experienced, it becomes more like 80 percent audio and 20 percent visual, and you’re lifting your binoculars less and less.”
One person who found himself bird watching without binoculars is Roy Rodriguez, 40, a bird expert and tour guide who has donned a blindfold to compete with blind birding groups during the Outta-Sight tournament (teams can include sighted members, but those members must be blindfolded). Rodriguez, who lives in the border town of Pharr, Texas, has been instrumental in helping Cruz and other area birders secure funding and transportation—which can be a great challenge—for many of their outings. The idea, he says, is to get the underserved blind population of south Texas, who number roughly 30,000, outside and into nature, to show them that there are alternatives to blind bingo and beeping-ball softball. When you show the blind or visually impaired those opportunities, Rodriguez says, they see more of a life for themselves than they have ever thought possible.
“Education is all about a change in behavior,” Rodriguez says. “What these people really want is a job, to get up and get outside. This is one step toward independence for them, and they can do something very well that other people can’t do.”
Across the country, other groups are also seeing the benefits of blind birding. In Idaho, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sponsors birding trips, and the Massachusetts Audubon Society has partnered with the Lowell (Mass.) Association for the Blind to lead several members around the Parker River Wildlife National Refuge. Next month, the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services will take blind and visually impaired clients on their first organized trip to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, says Carol Braithwaite, a counselor at the department who has retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease that attacks the retinas and can cause loss of sight. The Birmingham resident, who has been visually impaired since birth, has birded by sound since she was a young child looking out onto her parents’ rock garden from the family breakfast room.
“I can’t read a bird guide unless I have a good, strong magnifying glass and magnified reading glasses on,” said Braithwaite, a client-turned-counselor for the rehab services department. “Being a birder by ear is better than looking at the bird and reading about it in the guidebook.”
Cruz, the passionate south Texas birder, hopes to train other blind or visually impaired people to bird by sound. Many people, at first, think it’s odd that a blind person can learn birding, Cruz says. Blindness, though, is not a barrier. “The ear goes beyond walls and sight.”