Notes from Wildness in the City: the Case for Birding the Patch

Notes from my session, Wildness in the City: the Case for Birding the Patch. As delivered at the 2013 MEES Annual Conference. 

About Alex Dunn

AlexanderJosephDunn@Gmail.com

ADunn@EcoTarium.org

• EcoTarium: www.ecotariumlorg
• Mass Audubon Broad Meadow Brook: https://www.massaudubon.org/catalog/
• The Daily Bird New England: http://thedailybirdnewengland.blogspot.com/

Links, book titles, and references in order from Wildness in the City: the Case for Birding the Patch as delivered on March 6, 2013 at the MEES Annual Conference

Twitch vs. Patch

• Big Year: http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Year-Steve-Martin/dp/B004LWZWBU/ref=pd_bxgy_mov_img_y
• Big Sit: http://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/bwdsite/connect/bigsit/index.php
• Big Green Day: http://greenbigday.org

From Ecophobia to Topophila

• Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
• Beyond Ecophobia, David Sobel
• Topophilia, YiFu Tuan
• Becoming Animal and The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram
• My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism, David Gressner

Wildness as adventure + magic

• Urban Explorers, www.Undercity.org
• Alastair Humphreys, http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/
• Microadventures: http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/microadventures-3/
• The Boy Who Biked Around the World, Alastair Humphreys
• S24O by Grant Peterson, http://www.adventurecycling.org/resources/Petersen_S240s.pdf

Finding Patches in the City and Urban Birding

• The Typology of New Public Sites, Graham Coreil- Allen http://grahamprojects.com/pdfs/nps-t.pdf
• David Lindo “the Urban Birder”, http://www.theurbanbirder.com/
• Birders: the Central Park Effect http://www.amazon.com/Birders-The-Central-Park-Effect/dp/B009VRVGLK
• Ebird.org “hotspots map” (you must register to view): http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ 
• Mass Breeding Bird Atlas: http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bba/index.cfm?fa=explore.ResultsSummary&BBA_ID=MA2007 and preliminary report: http://www.massaudubon.org/StateoftheBirds/

Resources for Exploring a Patch

• What the Robin Knows, Jon Young and http://whattherobinknows.com/ or http://birdlanguage.com/what-is-bird-language/ecourse/
• Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, Peter Del Tredici
• Raccoon Nation documentary on PBS, http://video.pbs.org/video/2192070266/  
• The Cloud Collector’s Handbook, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and www.cloudappreciationsociety.org

History of the Field Guide

• John James Auduon
• Alexander Wilson
• Two Little Savages, Ernest Thompson Seton
• Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

A Model for Developmental Bird Watching

•        Jean Piaget (developmentalism): learning occurs in stages that happen at intervals and can be aided by, but not always pushed to by adults and teachers

•        David Kolb (experiential learning): learner must be actively involved in the experience, able to reflect on the experience, possess and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience, and possess decision making and problem solving skills in order to use the new ideas gained from the experience.

•        George Hein (constructivism): knowledge is created by the learner, not pumped in externally

•        Abigail Housen (aesthetic development) and Visual Thinking Strategies: http://www.vtshome.org/research/aesthetic-development

•        Stage I – From Not Seeing to Seeing (the Spark bird)

•        Stage II – Seeing (the bird feeder)

•        Stage III – From Seeing to Watching (the bird watcher)

•        Stage IV – Observing (The expert aka I love Confusing fall warblers)

•        Stage V – Integration (Ecological thinking)