Instead of a ring, Jared Parks gave his partner, Tara Holste, a pair of binoculars at their commitment ceremony in August. “We’re not going to spend a lot of time together if you don’t bird,” he told her. Bird watching is more than a hobby for Parks, a land protection specialist with the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy in Queenstown, MD. He leads bird walks on properties the Conservancy has helped to preserve throughout the Shore and approaches the sport he practices every day with boyish fascination.
Parks has been birding with his father and brother since the tender age of 4. He was participating in the National Audubon Society’s Christmas bird counts by the time he was 7 and started banding and tracking birds in the fourth grade.
“It’s a lot easier to know [birds] when you see them in the same spot every day and actually hold them in your hand,” Parks said of his training years banding birds. Banding involved attaching small tags to the birds’ legs, wings or necks to monitor their movement and behavior.
At 39, Parks is one of the younger birders in the field, which often attracts retirees in their 50s and 60s who “have more time to be interested and look at things.” But Parks said the sport is attracting more young faces — affectionately called “young guns” — and always new ones.
Guided bird walks with experts like Parks can be a good place to start for beginning birders. But Parks said that all beginners really need is a good guidebook, binoculars or a spotting scope and the right scenery. Continue reading…..
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