{"id":5812,"date":"2026-08-23T10:49:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T10:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5812"},"modified":"2026-08-23T10:49:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T10:49:48","slug":"i-had-no-one-to-bird-with-who-wasnt-20-years-older-than-me-meet-the-gen-zers-who-transformed-grandmas-hobby-into-an-analog-craze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5812","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I had no one to bird with who wasn\u2019t 20 years older than me\u2019: Meet the Gen Zers who transformed grandma\u2019s hobby into an analog craze"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>\u201cI remember starting birding and being very lonely,\u201d Bell told <em>Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI had no one to bird with who wasn\u2019t 20 years older than me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5810\">The CEO of $1.2 billion learning platform Preply says it all started with his online search for an English tutor<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But now, five years later, he co-runs a Discord server with 4,400 members who alert each other about bird sightings\u2014one small sign of a boom that shows up everywhere from Cornell University\u2019s suddenly crowded birding club to federal surveys showing birding participation among 25-to-34-year-olds has quadrupled since 2016.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>While birding is joining a Gen Z analog hobby boom as more young people are trying to go offline after the screen exhaustion of the pandemic, technology has also played a role in making birding more accessible. <\/p>\n<p>Merlin, the free bird-identification app run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, went from over 279,000 U.S. users in July 2019 to over 4.8 million in July 2026 and helps beginners identify common bird species using Cornell\u2019s eBird database.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBird watching, I think, used to be sort of a very, very niche thing, and now it is a cool thing,\u201d Christopher Wood, the director of eBird, told <em>Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s a mechanism that gets people outside and gets people in touch with nature, and then a percentage of those people start really understanding, learning those birds, and then they put their phone away completely.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>While Merlin doesn\u2019t track age data, more young people showing up to bird is evidenced by the National Audubon Society\u2019s growing presence on college campuses. Its campus chapter count has gone from zero to 117 in the past six years, and the organization is seeing \u201ca surge in our supporters in their 20s and 30s\u201d on social media, a spokesperson told <em>Fortune<\/em> over email.<\/p>\n<p>But ask young people how they actually started birding, and few mention a bird at all.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>More than identifying birds and sitting in nature, part of birding\u2019s appeal as a hobby is the people who set off the initial interest.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Shawn Wallace, 22, didn\u2019t plan on becoming a birder, but got into it after his college resident advisor invited him to go fishing and find a tufted duck, common in Europe but rare in New York.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cWe spent like four hours looking for it, and we didn\u2019t find it,\u201d Wallace told <em>Fortune<\/em>. \u201cBut then after that, whenever he went out, I tried to go out with him and I just continued down the rabbit hole.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5808\">Venezuela abandoning the bolivar and adopting the U.S. dollar would be the biggest currency switch since the advent of the euro, Hanke says<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jennifer Lodi-Smith, a psychologist at Canisius University who has spent four years collecting birders\u2019 origin stories, encountered similar examples again and again.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>She said more than two-thirds of the roughly 600 stories in her data set\u2014including 96 from Gen Z respondents\u2014are interpersonal rather than about the bird themselves, something that also applies to Lodi-Smith\u2019s birding journey.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t have a single spark-bird moment,\u201d she told <em>Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI have spark people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Wallace\u2019s advisor, Robert Buckert, helped connect him to other birders who showed Wallace the ropes and the spots to go, with even the older crowd of birders being \u201cgreat people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Buckert, a long-time birder himself, explained that birding\u2019s strength is its \u201cgiving and wonderful community full of mentors\u201d that welcomes young people and gives them a place to learn and belong, something they\u2019re missing in the digital age.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you\u2019re surrounded by all these people that take you under their wing, pun intended, and mentor you so strongly, then you just get kind of swept into that,\u201d he told Fortune. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the craving for the outdoors. It\u2019s also that one-on-one mentor to mentee thing that people are dying for. It\u2019s a great avenue for camaraderie and to learn from your elders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now Wallace, who was Buckert\u2019s first mentee, tries to get other people into birding as well.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve convinced at least, or maybe helped convince, three people to buy a bird feeder for their backyard, or at least 10 people to download the Merlin app,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=5806\">OTC Markets CEO: 250 years of market history just collided with a new SEC rule<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cBird watching, I think, used to be sort of a very, very niche thing, and now it is a cool thing,\u201d eBird director Christopher Wood told Fortune. \u201cThey put their phone away completely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gen-z"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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