Sure, there are games with birds in them. You can build your skills at “ Red’s First Flight ,” the reinvention of the popular slingshot app game “Angry Birds” that disappeared from Apple’s App Store in 2019. You might destroy your frenemies at the tabletop awesomeness of “Wingspan.” Or bid your time awaiting the two-player sequel to the wildly popular grumpy-bird-inspired “Untitled Goose Game.”
But there’s nothing like getting off your laurels to make a game of the real thing — birding .
Gamifying birdwatching can be a quest. Or, based on numbers, it can be like having a “big year” — the biggest contests in birdwatching, which simply means how many bird species you can see in a year.
Break that down into counties, state, country, or your local patch, such as local hotspots or even your backyard. Maybe it’s a five-mile radius, or a big bike year. And while there are big year rules (aba.org/aba-area-big-year-rules), it’s more like that defunct game show, “Whose Line is It Anyway?” — where the rules don’t matter all that much.
That said, being kind to both birds and people should always be rules. And it’s all meaningless as far as winning anything other than bragging rights, except the fun, the travel, the people and the data are the prizes — which is integral to ornithology.
So maybe your birding contest isn’t a big year at all. Maybe you simply want to be queen or king of a local hotspot. You want to be at the top having tallied the most bird species (or most checklists). This can take place over years. (Takes some stamina to stay king, right?)
Birding can also simply be an ongoing series of adventurous quests, like something out of the video games “No Man’s Sky,” “Legend of Zelda” or like one of my favorite PS5 games, “Stray.” Just get out there and lose yourself, find all the mysteries, and tell them all as part of your birdy desires fulfilled.
Even ornithologists do both: quests and number counting. They know that bird quests can make your world big. How many species of yardbirds, hotspot birds, pelagic birds, county, state, country, etc.? Where can I have my next bird adventure, which translates to what is my next quest?
Not to mention, what’s the rarest bird I can find? What’s the farthest I can travel for birds? Add up those numbers, share those quest tales, and compete with yourself or others. Even the popular eBird website (ebird.org/home) and accompanying app have recently revamped, further gamifying birding by enticing users to have not only big years, but big finds, big days, big weeks and big months.
Many of us are just competitive by nature. We live in a world where we consume sports. We’re motivated by watching others compete and do extraordinary things. We see ourselves in them. So, yeah, we want to be hotspot leaders, we want to find that never-before-found-at-this-hotspot rarity.
Many birders aren’t even aware they’re part of your game. Thing is, it’s okay to be competitive, even if that competition is solely with yourself. Let’s face it though, you might want to be king of Meadow Park in San Luis Obispo County. I myself earned that self-imposed title by visiting that park more than any other birder, by observing and pursuing every little bird and bird call and song that I heard. I’m no different than you. I just put in the time and even found a golden-winged warbler.
Birding locally in your area, frequenting all your favorite hotspots — which might be the locals no one else visits — changes your relationship with your area, to nature and makes you aware of which birds are around and when, and what might show up. By being hyper-aware of your surroundings, you might even get to know specific individual birds. And that’s both the adventure of what you might find, and a fun numbers game of working your way to the top of an all-time species count on a hotspot list.
Competitive birding keeps you on track, like an athlete trying to win a sporting event. Maybe you’re looking for some hard-to-find rarity, like that slate-throated redstart recently discovered in a San Francisco park by my birder friend Kai Mills. It was “deep in willows… always moving,” Kai told me. Knowing Kai, I’m sure I made a game of it, wanting to find the bird before anyone else.
Gamifying birding gives you motivation and momentum. It changes the experience from being something you simply enjoy doing and learning about to an actual adventure, transforming daily activity into something more magical. It keeps you on task, sure — but it also changes the entire flavor of the birding experience. You really get to know natural areas with specificity: individual trees, maybe a patch of flowers that hummingbirds visit, nest sites, hidden side trails, where the evil tick monsters live, etc.
You will know what different habitats mean, just by having invented bird quests. Cross that boardwalk, then climb that big hill into the pines to get to the secret pygmy nuthatches. You’ll know what different weather patterns indicate and how those affect bird behaviors. You’ll figure out how estuaries change birding depending on tides. And what the marine layers mean to birds — how it traps them sometimes.
In this way, maybe it’s not unlike a video game where you’re a character, but also the places become characters too, and the creatures you encounter become characters. Secret soras and bitterns hiding in the reeds. Suddenly you’re the bird wizard who must find them.
Each day offers a possible new main quest. You also have unexpected side quests. Alerts to your phone, tips from friends, whatever it is, suddenly you’re on the hunt. What you thought was an adventure to find a rare bobolink is now an expedition to find a super rare swallow-tailed gull on a beach in Santa Barbara.
Here’s a birder game: What is my bird-finds-per-minute ratio when I birdwatch a hotspot that has lots of species? How many species can I find in an hour? How many can I find on a mountain? From a boat? Can I beat my record of how many types of warblers I can find in a year? Or, one of my favorites: What’s my current daily checklist streak? My record: 1,179 days. Others have streaks going for many thousands of days. This takes endurance. And whatever you decide, you can track it on eBird, quietly compete, or boldly declare your intentions with birder friends.
Don’t forget that eBird has maps of every county, state and country. So, when you see a bird you fill another area of the map. How many areas can you fill? You only need one bird to fill an entire area. They can be solely house sparrows for all you might care.
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This story is part of a collection of stories printed in September 2024.
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One last thing: You don’t have to make birding a big year every year, and you don’t have to make that top one hundred list of Los Angeles County, California, or US birders. Either way, birding is not Pokémon GO. Though it kind of is.
Only, birds are real, their numbers are declining, and they’re precious. Birds need you and I to find and count them, so that we can fight to protect not only them, but parks, riparian areas, wetland rehabilitation, and land conservancy.
With that said, record a copy of “ The Sibley Guide to Birds ,” and “ Sibley Birder’s Trivia: A Card Game ” while you’re at it, then some binoculars, and your big competitive heart… and let the bird games begin!
Nicholas Belardes is author of the novel “ The Deading .” He writes eco-horror, Chicano literature and the occasional essay.