If you’re looking for a new birding mode, consider checking out the variety of Birding Trails threading across North America. Most states promote at least one birding trail, and each birding trail features a diversity of birding sites connected by bird-rich drives. Stretching along highways and backroads, birding trails offer birders and eco-tourists grand opportunities to explore diverse habitats near home and in distant places — state by state. Birding trails pass through iconic American locations and historic regions, following beautiful landscapes that change with the seasons, enriched by the variety of birds you encounter along the way.
The growth of birding trails combines Americans’ love of automobiles and their interest in birds, and birding trails created better birding-access and birding opportunities. The popularity of birding trails is largely a 21st Century phenomenon, part of “birding economics” that was embraced by communities, states, and regional economic-development groups. It’s a fine demonstration of community involvement and commitment to preserving natural resources based on responsible tourism and an interest to attract the birding community as eco-tourists. But birders are true beneficiaries of the interest in birding trails, along with the birds and birding sites along the myriad routes.
Formal birding-trails were initiated in 1996 in Texas with the opening of the first of three segments of the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, the brainchild of Ted Eubanks and Madge Lindsay. Today, there are nine in that initial birding trail, which proved to be an excellent example for other groups to follow and revise. The rest, as they say, is history; with similar birding trails designed across the United States.
Birding trails usually feature detailed maps that provide directions to prime birding-sites with exception-birding drives between sites. The maps likewise provide helpful descriptions of what birds to look for along the birding trails in season. Plus, birding trails fuse birding with conservation, regional education, and ecotourism — a valuable and significant addition to our nation’s landscape.
Is there a birding trail near you? Maybe it leads to a favorite birding site, or a series of new hotspots to explore this spring. Check out the American Birding Association’s impressive state by state list of birding trails with local links and additional information about the exciting birds you can find in season along America’s birding trail system at https://www.aba.org/aba-area-birding-trails/.
