JayB
Steelhead
As a non-bird-watcher, my understanding of bird-watching can be reduced to: look up, note presence of birds, potentially identify birds, repeat. If left to my own devices, that's all I'd ever know, but things change.
In this case, what's changed is that my 10-year old has spontaneously taken a keen interest in observing the birds in our yard, identifying them, drawing pictures of them, learning the latin names, telling me about the characteristics of the males vs the females, customary behaviores, etc. She's been exposed to fishing, and someday she might develop an interest in it, but as things stand now it's not on the menu. I've been keeping my antennae tuned for other outdoor-oriented activities that she might have an intrinsic interest in that we can do together locally, so that I can log some quality father-daughter time in the outdoors and potentially foster what seems like an almost surreally healthy and wholesome interest for a young person.
If someone wanted to get their kid into fishing, skiing, kayaking, climbing, camping, etc and asked me for input I'd have at least a few ideas about how to make the experience more fun, and a longer list of things that I wouldn't do unless the goal was to make them hate the activity forever right from the outset.
As someone who knows nothing about bird watching other than what I've stated above *and* the fact that there are millions of avid/fanatical bird watchers out there, I figure there might be at least a few suggestions that veteran bird-watchers might have to offer. Places and times of year that offer particularly good bird-watching opportunities, short hikes that might do the same, books, "scavenger hunt" style books where you can record sightings of relatively common NW birds, etc.
I'm not going to go overboard on this since it could very easily turn out to be a passing fancy, but there's an opening here to potentially develop an active, multifaceted outdoor hobby that can be enjoyed for a lifetime so I figured I'd be remiss if I didn't invest a bit of time and effort in fostering it.
On the off chance it "takes" - one obvious potential upside of the hobby would be as a "hook" to motivate her to participate in other outdoor activities that she might not otherwise want to participate in. "Hey - I saw a bunch of (check notes)...diving buffleheads...when I was fishing yesterday, you should come out next time. We can spend most of the time looking for birds and I'll bring my rods just in case we see some fish while we're at it."
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.!
In this case, what's changed is that my 10-year old has spontaneously taken a keen interest in observing the birds in our yard, identifying them, drawing pictures of them, learning the latin names, telling me about the characteristics of the males vs the females, customary behaviores, etc. She's been exposed to fishing, and someday she might develop an interest in it, but as things stand now it's not on the menu. I've been keeping my antennae tuned for other outdoor-oriented activities that she might have an intrinsic interest in that we can do together locally, so that I can log some quality father-daughter time in the outdoors and potentially foster what seems like an almost surreally healthy and wholesome interest for a young person.
If someone wanted to get their kid into fishing, skiing, kayaking, climbing, camping, etc and asked me for input I'd have at least a few ideas about how to make the experience more fun, and a longer list of things that I wouldn't do unless the goal was to make them hate the activity forever right from the outset.
As someone who knows nothing about bird watching other than what I've stated above *and* the fact that there are millions of avid/fanatical bird watchers out there, I figure there might be at least a few suggestions that veteran bird-watchers might have to offer. Places and times of year that offer particularly good bird-watching opportunities, short hikes that might do the same, books, "scavenger hunt" style books where you can record sightings of relatively common NW birds, etc.
I'm not going to go overboard on this since it could very easily turn out to be a passing fancy, but there's an opening here to potentially develop an active, multifaceted outdoor hobby that can be enjoyed for a lifetime so I figured I'd be remiss if I didn't invest a bit of time and effort in fostering it.
On the off chance it "takes" - one obvious potential upside of the hobby would be as a "hook" to motivate her to participate in other outdoor activities that she might not otherwise want to participate in. "Hey - I saw a bunch of (check notes)...diving buffleheads...when I was fishing yesterday, you should come out next time. We can spend most of the time looking for birds and I'll bring my rods just in case we see some fish while we're at it."
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.!
