birdability

The Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi, holds a special place in Birdability’s history.

In 2024, it became the first Birdability Outreach Program (BOP) site, helping Birdability explore what it looks like to bring accessible birding, nature connection, and community building directly to people who may face barriers to participating in traditional birding activities. The program was made possible in part through support from the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation’s Quality of Life Grant, which helped Birdability and local partners create opportunities for residents to engage with birds and nature in meaningful and accessible ways.

When Bev Gatliff moved from Florida to California in 2017, she brought with her a lifelong love of birds. What she did not know yet was that Birdability would help reconnect her to birding, community, and joy during a time when changing mobility and health needs had begun to reshape her life.

Today, Bev is one of the driving forces behind accessible birding efforts with Monterey Audubon Society, helping to build Birdability outings, mindful bird walks, senior center programming, and growing opportunities for birding by ear in Monterey County.

Birdability Week 2026 – October 19 through 25, 2026
Bird Where You Are
Bird Where You Are means watching birds from your kitchen window. Listening from your favorite park bench. Exploring an accessible trail. Birding from your car. Spending time on your porch or balcony. Sitting outside during a lunch break. Noticing the birds from bed during a health flare. Birding in a group or by yourself.

It also means birding at your own pace, in your own way, and at your own level of experience. It means loving the common birds just as much as the rarities.

Because if you enjoy wild birds in any way, you are a birder. And you belong here.

For Birdability Week 2026, we are celebrating the many ways people connect with birds and nature while inviting even more people to discover that there is a place for them in the birding community.

When the second annual Blind Birder Bird-a-Thon wrapped up, the numbers were impressive.

Almost 300 registered participants joined from more than 10 countries and territories. Participants represented 35 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, Canada, Venezuela, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and Mexico. Together, participants heard and identified 355 bird species across the globe. Community events took place across North America and far beyond.

But when participants gathered for the wrap-up celebration call, the numbers were only a tiny bit of the story. Participants talked about joy and learning and the birds they heard (including a Wedge-tailed Shearwater, which was breeding near the hotel where one participant was staying in Hawaii!). Most of all, though, they talked about belonging.

Birding has been part of my PTSD journey for more than 30 years. This June, for PTSD Awareness Month, we’re exploring the connections between trauma, disability, and birds, including why PTSD is an important access consideration, how trauma can change the way we experience birding, and what research tells us about the benefits of spending time with birds. Most importantly, we’re reminding ourselves that there are many ways to bird, and every one of them belongs.

We are delighted to welcome Maggie Smith as Birdability’s Outreach Program Coordinator! Maggie joined us at the beginning of the year and has been working with rehabilitation hospitals and programs around the country to implement birding programs for people living with spinal cord injuries. Maggie brings birding joy and an infectious smile to everything she does, and we can’t wait for you to meet her. Read her introductory blog here!

There are some people whose presence changes the shape of a community simply because of how they move through it. Marcia Obara was one of those people.

Marcia was a longtime champion for accessible birding, a retired nurse, a past Birdability Captain, a Certified Access Leader, and someone who quietly and steadily helped countless people feel that they belonged outdoors. She led accessible birding outings in Tucson with care and attention to what people actually needed: smooth trails, shade, benches, accessible restrooms, a pace that welcomed everybody, and space for joy in birds.

This article, Seeing Further: Blind Birders Advance New Frontiers of Learning and Discovery is reprinted with permission from the birding in the 2020s issue of the ABA Magazine, Birding. Many thanks to the ABA and Ted Floyd, Birding Editor.

On May 18, 2025, the first-ever national Blind Birder Bird-a-Thon took place in 34 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, as well as Canada and Venezuela. Species recorded included everything from fluting Wood Thrushes to squeaky Bananaquits to whistling Venezuelan Troupials. This event was a signature moment to draw people who are blind or partially sighted to the outdoors and give new meaning to the word birdwatching—that birding is not only about the kaleidoscope of colors seen through binoculars but also an auditory adventure of discovery guided by sound rather than sight.

I was one of those blind birders. I have Usher syndrome, an inherited retinal disease that causes progressive hearing and sight loss, the latter due to retinitis pigmentosa (RP).

Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) are an annual community science project, going on 123 years, in which teams of birders collect data on winter birds. The National Audubon Society organizes this event as an effort to track bird population trends and the data is valuable to biologists and conservation! Over the past few years, Birdability has encouraged birders to organize CBCs that are accessible to disabled birders. Historically, birders who experience access challenges were often unable to participate in the Christmas Bird Count, but we are working to create opportunities for these folks to be included in their local CBCs.

Good afternoon, 2020 spring birders. In the midst of this strange and difficult spring, with suffering and trauma and chaos continuously in the foreground, I was recently reminded that inspiration