In one neighborhood stroll in the city of Cali, Colombia, with local guide Andres Lozano, I saw Colombian chachalacas, black-throated mangos, jet antbirds, four kinds of tanager, yellow-bellied seedeaters, chestnut-fronted macaws - 35 species in less than half a mile. Now that international travel is recovering, it also means new opportunities for international birding tourism - especially in Colombia. This adds up to more people buying bird feeders, binoculars and cameras. The number of participants in the Great Backyard Bird Count has more than doubled. Today, there are 60% more people logging their lists on the bird identification app eBird. Thus began our small part in the global pandemic birding bump.īirdwatching was a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States before the pandemic. “Yeah, we got two sparrows and two pigeons here,” my girlfriend responded. “We stopped our run, because we’re in a very bird-rich area,” I said in one recording. A month later, we were going for runs around our Oakland neighborhood, carrying a pair of binoculars and a paperback field guide to the birds of California while recording the results for posterity on our phones. In March of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic trapped us at home, my girlfriend and I bought a birdfeeder.

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