All the Cool Kids Are Birding
Not long before the sun rose on a Saturday in May, five men in their mid-20s were standing alongside an unassuming wetland in New Jersey, searching for birds. Ryan Zucker, a 23-year-old who could do an impressive impersonation of an eastern screech owl, had just taken a small branch to the eye, but still the group was exuberant.Since midnight, they’d heard that owl, a common gallinule, and—after following some freight-rail tracks through the dark—the high-pitched, near-electronic trill of a sedge wren, the first recorded in Sussex County in 13 years.
Reported by 1 outlet — The Atlantic. See all sources ↓
Not long before the sun rose on a Saturday in May, five men in their mid-20s were standing alongside an unassuming wetland in New Jersey, searching for birds. Ryan Zucker, a 23-year-old who could do an impressive impersonation of an eastern screech owl, had just taken a small branch to the eye, but still the group was exuberant.Since midnight, they’d heard that owl, a common gallinule, and—after following some freight-rail tracks through the dark—the high-pitched, near-electronic trill of a sedge wren, the first recorded in Sussex County in 13 years. (A police officer had asked what exactly they thought they were doing on the tracks at 2 a.m., but took “We’re looking for birds” as answer enough.) In the previous 10 minutes, they had seen a sandhill crane raise its head above the reeds, watched a mallard chase an otter away from her ducklings, and heard a brown thrasher in the distance.Each species put the five men one notch closer to being the repeat championship team in the World Series of Birding, a 24-hour contest to identify as many species as possible, by eye or ear, throughout New Jersey. The birds would start singing in earnest soon, and to cover the state before midnight came again, the guys needed to leave, now.As one, the men—called ***mega (pronounced star-star-star-mega, or Team Mega if you can’t be bothered)—took off sprinting toward their van.
Read the full report at The Atlantic ↗
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- What's the story?
- Not long before the sun rose on a Saturday in May, five men in their mid-20s were standing alongside an unassuming wetland in New Jersey, searching for birds. Ryan Zucker, a 23-year-old who could do an impressive impersonation of an eastern screech owl, had just taken a small branch to the eye, but still the group was exuberant.Since midnight, they’d heard that owl, a common gallinule, and—after following some freight-rail tracks through the dark—the high-pitched, near-electronic trill of a sedge wren, the first recorded in Sussex County in 13 years.
- How widely is it covered?
- 1 outlet, average source rating 8.0/10.
- When was it last updated?
- 6m ago.
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All the Cool Kids Are Birding
Sources1TypeCoverageThe Atlantic