You know how little kids pick something to fixate on, like dinosaurs or trucks, and it becomes their entire personality? As a five year old, completely enamored with my grandparents and their interest in birds, I picked birds. I had a field guide I would flick through and copy in crayon. I collected countless Audubon stuffed birds that made noise when you squeezed them. In first grade, I was appalled when none of my classmates knew the word “cormorant,” and submitted drawings of my favorite bird (the Wood Duck) to every art competition regardless of theme.
As with all little kid interests, my obsession faded over time. I still decorated my room with bird-themed decor, or would occasionally use birds as a topic for a school project if they were relevant. I kept my Audubon bird collection on display. But life moved on, and I moved on, and I became known for other things.
That is, until my friend’s brother got really into birdwatching my senior year of high school. Naturally, she told me about it, and started showing me his pictures in the hopes I could identify them. While I didn’t really bother with species as a kid, I still knew enough to guess, especially the particularly colorful or interesting ones that stuck in my memory (like goldfinches and phalaropes). The two of us went birdwatching a few times after my high school graduation, which mostly consisted of pointing binoculars at a bird and going “yep, there’s one!”
With my interest reignited and my new knowledge of apps like eBird and Merlin, I packed my parent’s binoculars on a whim and took them to my first year of college. I slowly taught myself the basics, like learning common species or knowing where and when to look. Looking for extracurriculars, I briefly joined a research project on modeling hummingbird bills. While the job was short-lived, I got a taste of the world of ornithology, plus the chance to learn from experts.
Like any college student, I had more than my fair share of career crises, social life drama, and health issues. Birdwatching became my rock. Whether in the dead of winter, or 100 degree heat, or middle of midterms, I would drag myself out of bed to chase rarities or wander Seattle’s parks with binoculars, learning more about birding and identification as I went.
After taking a quarter off to deal with some health problems, I came back to school determined to do better for myself, both physically and mentally. I wanted to prioritize things that both made me happy and kept me healthy. Birds checked both of those boxes! As a college sophomore, birds became a bigger part of my life. I started volunteering for a research project on campus window collisions, which became a two-year research assistant position absolutely invaluable in advancing my career and building my soft skills. I declared a minor in Environmental Science. I took a 10-day field ornithology class that took me all over Washington state, where I met one of my closest birdwatcher friends. I also spent six months on a bioacoustics research project, where I got to assemble training data for a bird call classifier (read: listen to bird calls for six hours a week). Finally, I ran my senior capstone with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology on studying beginner birdwatchers.
And, in the middle of all this, I never stopped birdwatching. I couldn’t. Maybe my childhood interest messed with my brain while it was still developing, or maybe I was wired that way from the start. I love the excitement of fixing my binoculars on something new, or the thrill of planning a birding trip, or the comfort of seeing my favorite common birds in a new way. I’ve never gotten tired of it, and I don’t think I ever will.
Professionally, I’m a product designer. This website hosts my portfolio and other documents I need for my career. However, birds will always be a part of my life, and my personal identity is an important part of who I am as a designer. Thus, here also lives a collection of my stories and pictures from my time as a birdwatcher.
Summer Delehanty's Portfolio 