Two-wheeled birding is an avian adventure in the Twin Cities

Monthly for the last four summers Sherry Gray and David Blaney have been gathering people to ride bicycles around the Twin Cities and look for birds Called Bike Bird it s one of the pursuits of the St Paul Bird Alliance formerly the Audubon Society and aims to spread the gospel of low-speed two-wheeled birding Last weekend I joined the Bike Bird group for a ride around Shoreview a northern St Paul suburb where I saw and heard a lot of birds and had a lovely time My main discovery was that birding by bicycle is a great way to teach yourself patience the practice of deep observation and to connect to place I recommend it as good way to escape your car and get proceeding outside Watching birds meeting people About eight birders met up next to Shoreview s Snail Lake on Sunday for a short bike ride and two-hour session of birding around the a chain of lakes and streams Snail Lake Grass Lake Lake Vadnais and assorted wetlands running through the middle of Ramsey County Astride a teal Fairdale hybrid Gray set the scene with a insufficient details about the parkland where the warblers like to hang out how you can spot coyotes chasing ducks across the lake ice in winter and the group went through a short round of introductions We were a mix of young and old locals and transplants including a scant up-to-date arrivals from Montana and Washington Birding is a good way to make fast friends Be sure to pull off to the same side of the path leaving room for others Gray recounted us which was excellent advice given how often we stopped along the way Bicycling birders search for birds on a trail near Snail Lake in Shoreview Credit Bill Linkeke Then we were off for a -mile -minute adventure and I briskly made my first discovery about birding by bicycle If you re used to traveling long distances at a decent speeds this is not that Birding is the practice of paying close attention which means that the bicycle group stops frequently and repeatedly to stare at the woods trees sky and water This is to say that birding by bicycle is the opposite of riding in a spandex peloton down Military Road at miles an hour You don t draft together speeding over the countryside the landscape blurring in your periphery Birders rarely look at the path before them instead scanning the tree line for tiny creatures Because riding hastily might mean missing a common yellow-throated warbler one rides slowly and stops frequently I d recommend innovating new hand gestures just for birding an elaborate elbow thrust that means Everyone stop right now and be very quiet I just thought I heard a red-eyed viero If you want to elevate your heart rate birding by bicycle can be frustrating but if you want to appreciate the world around you it s exciting The entire practice of birding hinges on observation How much can you notice How a large number of details can you discover Can you see the tiny stripe of white on the inside of the tail of a four-inch-tall sparrow perched on a branch feet away Related Seven ideas for downtown St Paul from a revitalized downtown Detroit Because it s quieter than driving you can hear the bids explained David Blaney Sherry s husband and birding partner when I appealed him about bikes and birds Mostly we go hiking but sometimes we like using bikes where you can cover more ground Listening is critical to birding and among the hardest things to learn for a novice like myself This is where the bicycle really shines gliding along at slow speeds down winding trails keeping your ears tuned to high frequency background noise At one point I petitioned a nearby birder What s that That s a strange call It turned out I that had noticed a the high squeak of a bicycle brake Each time we stopped a great number of of us got our phones out and used Merlin a great app that identifies and records bird songs in real time Listening to bird calls makes for an easy meditative training exercise The only real predicament was that our group kept talking about birds often making it hard to in fact hear them a trouble common to any group bike ride A sparse tips for birding by bicycle You will need binoculars ideally on a neck strap comfy shoes and to be in no particular hurry I recommend a kickstand and a cruiser-type bike one that allows you to hop easily on and off at the drop of a birdcall I do not recommend a spandex kit Camelback water garments or clipless pedals and can assure you that carbon fiber would be an irrelevant advantage In fact as Sherry Gray explained intentional spatially limited birding is growing more popular among the low-carbon crowd Called patch birding in urban areas it s the practice of diligently documenting and noticing things in a small geography say a specific lake park or clump of trees For various this can be as enjoyable as driving or flying all over the region in search of an owl irruption or another elusive rarity for your birding life list Birding in the Twin Cities The other nice thing about birds and bikes is learning about the city and its avian habitat Gray s group brings people to explore and learn about the plentiful wilder areas of the Twin Cities For centuries seen as the last valuable land by European settlers and real estate developers wetlands particularly shine in this context These marginal spaces at the edges of things attract all manner of birds fish and amphibians along with their human onlookers The birds are pretty quiet in contemporary times Gray apologized to the group before adding that the water was high this year Returning to the same spots year over year lakes like these trails along the Mississippi or Minnesota Rivers or the Sherburne Wildlife Refuge north of Minneapolis allows her to introduce groups to the ecology of the Twin Cities and cover a lot of ground Related New investigation on affordable housing rekindles long-simmering debate Over the minutes and four miles of the ride I saw or heard a red-belly woodpecker wood duck flicker common yellow-throated warblers song sparrow vitro green heron great blue heron crow starling osprey kingbird cormorant catbird car horn goldfish red-winged blackbird indigo bunting goldfinches cedar waxwing loon wren Phoebe downy woodpecker robin bald eagle swamp sparrow and a bunch of Canada geese Often I was communicated I heard these things The highlight of our ride was an osprey that arrived over an unnamed wetland I was the first to spot it for the record The raptor kept performing a distinctive hovering action as it scanned the waters for delicious fish angling upward and flapping just enough to stay positioned in the same spot in the air trying to see its pretty at just the right angle We watched it perform this dance a sparse times before it ultimately dove down to the water bringing up a small silvery fish and returning over the treetops to its nest Riders the Bike Bird birding group emerge from a tunnel near Snail Lake in Shoreview Credit Bill Lindeke After making our way around Grass Lake the birding group ran into an infrastructure barrier the noise from I- became too loud to hear bird songs a complication for both birds and their human observers We averaged about three miles an hour on the ride before heading off to a nearby bakery to digest the adventure Unlike bulk bike rides I ve been on the reward wasn t due to the amount of exercise we d gotten but because of the number of things we d noticed We d ridden at the pace of a brisk walk but with bird species on our collective list averaged over unique birds per hour That s an epic bike ride in a different kind of way I recommend it The post Two-wheeled birding is an avian adventure in the Twin Cities appeared first on MinnPost