The Next Generation of Birding

Noah Brinkman and Grey Barbier can tell you what kind of swallow you’re looking at just by how it flies. Even though they’re still in high school, the two of them have been birding for years, honing their expertise in bird calls, sightings and identification.

“There’s a thing called a spark bird,” Noah explains, “and it’s the bird that ignited your passion for birding.” For Noah, that was a Brown Creeper outside his window one morning. For Grey, it was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet out at Hahns Peak.

When starting out, Grey and Noah would pour over bird books for hours, reading and studying the different species.

“One of the great things about birding,” they point out, “is that you don’t need a lot of gear. You can really just go with your eyes.” Other birders helped teach them tricks of the field, like how to spot and identify different species. And now the duo is helping to teach other birders at this year’s crane festival.

“We help people find birds and identify them,” they say. “We teach them which calls are from which species. And we help people set up scopes to watch the cranes while we teach them some facts about them.”

The fact that every other crane festival volunteer is about 30 years older than both of them doesn’t deter them. “We started in 6th grade,” they say. “No one else, none of our friends was interested in birds but we would be looking through field guides all day in school.”

These days, Grey and Noah love to go out and watch one bird all day, noting its behaviors. They also take a trip every year, spanning the state from Pueblo and Alamosa to Denver and Boulder, during which they keep track of just how many species they can see in 24 hours. Locally though, one of their favorite birding spots is the Yampa River Preserve in Hayden, where, during spring and fall migration you can spot some rarities.

And their coolest sighting? “A very, very hard question,” they say. But it ends up being a Black Phoebe, spotted on the Core Trail which turned out to be only the second one spotted in Routt County.

Catch up with Grey and Noah and learn more from them at this year’s 12th annual crane festival. For more information and a schedule of events, visit www.coloradocranes.org.