Let me start by saying this… I used to be afraid of birds. It wasn’t in a “I don’t love them” kind of way, but more like “I don’t want to be in an aviary, they can fly and I can’t” kind of way. If you knew me growing up, this post would absolutely shock you. 😆

Today, our family Life List sits at 193 species. I keep binoculars in the truck. I have a painted bunting on my wish list for the second year in a row. And last summer, I booked a birding excursion on a boat off the coast of Maine to see puffins. 

All of this because I let my kindergartner pick our next homeschool science unit four years ago. This is how we started birding with kids…

My middle son was about five when he got to choose our next science unit from The Good and the Beautiful. One of the options was birds, and he picked it without hesitation.

As we worked through the unit, they started pointing at birds in our backyard and asking me what they were. I had absolutely no idea, so we downloaded the free Merlin app and started taking photos to upload for identification. It would tell us what we were looking at, and slowly we started to learn who our backyard neighbors were.

Northern cardinals, American robins, blue jays and Eastern bluebirds came first because they were the easiest to spot. Then it was American goldfinches, house finches, and mourning doves. Over the course of a few weeks, the boys stopped needing the app to tell them what they were seeing — and honestly, so did I.

We started logging every bird we identified, which in the birding world is called a Life List. We decided early on to keep one list for the whole family instead of individual ones, and we made one rule: at least two of us have to see the bird before it gets added.

It’s never been about racking up a number for us. It’s about actually seeing the bird, recognizing it together, and knowing we earned it. That rule has made every single addition feel like it matters much more than a high number.

Over the years, there have been several times that we practically knew we had a new bird, but only heard it from afar or saw something flutter, but just not close enough to know without a doubt what it was and that’s OK. I think that in itself is a valuable lesson for our kids, so we’ll find them next time and it’ll be that much sweeter.

At the end of the science unit, the curriculum said to go birding. I looked up a few local spots by searching where to go near us (ebird.org — powered by CornellLab — has a great map with local hot spots, which are public places birds have been logged recently), and we headed to a nature preserve in town.

It was harder than the backyard (quite a bit at first). You have to walk, then quiet everyone down while you scan the trees, and my young kids absolutely knew how to hike but they didn’t know how to do it without talking the entire time. I’m sure we missed more birds than we found on those first outings, but we saw enough to keep going back.

The two things that made the biggest difference were Blake’s camera with a longer zoom lens and a pair of binoculars for me. He could photograph a bird from a distance, and then I’d use the Merlin app to ID it from the image.

We also started turning on the Sound ID feature while walking, which picks up bird calls in real time and tells you which birds are nearby. That way, we could narrow down where to look before we ever spotted one.

The birding community actually allows you to log a bird by sound alone, but our family rule is that we want eyes on it first. For us, it’s about the full experience of seeing and recognizing — not just adding to a count.

We were already hiking in some incredible places — Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Glacier, Badlands, Zion, Acadia, Shenandoah, and of course the Smokies — so adding “look for birds” to those trips didn’t take any extra effort at all. But it changed the experience in ways I didn’t expect.

We started picking up bird field guides for the regions we were visiting, and my kids added bird books to their wish lists for holidays and birthdays. Because the species are completely different depending on where you are, they wanted to learn and study before our upcoming cross-country trips.

The boys would study the books before we left and talk about the birds they were hoping to find, which gave them something to look forward to beyond the hiking itself (which actually allowed for longer hikes — a bonus for us)!

My oldest chose the Steller’s Jay for our trip to Glacier National Park. He loves blue jays, so seeing a Western variety was a big deal for him. It was the fourth day in the park and we were hiking to a waterfall in the Many Glacier area when a Steller’s Jay showed up, flying from tree to tree, almost following us along the trail.

The hike cut through an old burn area, so the trees were bare and we could see it so clearly against the sky.

That was a new lifer for our family, and three years later, my boys still tell the story. They were sharing it with a friend of ours just last week — unprompted, with every detail intact. That’s the kind of memory we wouldn’t have without birding, and it didn’t cost us a thing beyond paying attention.

We don’t take special birding trips or go out of our way to make it happen most of the time. It’s just part of our other hobbies now. The kids (and us) have gotten really good at identifying birds in our area — in the backyard, around town, and in the mountains here.

We’ve even learned some calls well enough to recognize them without seeing the bird first. The red-eyed vireo is loud and almost impossible to find in the treetops, but we always know it’s there. After a few years of hearing it, we finally saw it in the trees in the Smokies. The Carolina wren might be the loudest bird in the Southeast for its size, and it makes sure you know it’s around.

I keep binoculars in the truck at all times now, and the kids each have their own pairs. They’re not always super helpful at their ages (it’s hard to find the exact branch a bird is sitting on through a binocular lens), but it gets them in the habit and they love having them.

Over time, the backyard evolved alongside us. We started with feeders, then the boys got a camera feeder from their grandparents one Christmas, and eventually we added a few bird houses. Now we know exactly who lives where.

The chickadees like the side front yard and we hear them chickadee-dee-deeing while the boys play soccer in the mornings. The cardinals love the Bradford pear in the back. House finches set up their nest on our front porch every spring without fail.

The Eastern bluebirds have claimed the bird house near the back porch for the last few years running. Goldfinches visit, blue jays come over from the neighbor’s tree for the feeders, mourning doves are absolute hogs at the seed, and every once in a while a flock of 30 to 50 robins descends on the whole yard at once (that one never stops being wild to see).

Just yesterday, my oldest was taking our dog out back and spotted a bird that doesn’t normally show up in our yard. He yelled for his brother — the best identifier of all of us — who came running (he’s now nine). Without pulling out a phone or hesitating for even a second, he said, “White-breasted nuthatch. We’ve seen them before, but never at home.” I stood there thinking about how far we’ve come from the mom who couldn’t name a single bird in her own backyard.

We’ve added a new tradition that I love: at the beginning of each year, we each pick a bird we’d love to add as a new lifer before the year is over.

I’m on year two for a painted bunting. They’re coastal birds, and we just haven’t gotten lucky. We went to Savannah a few months ago and hiked a state park that’s known to have them, but still nothing. It’s still sitting right at the top of my list, and I’m not giving up on it.

My cousin from Florida visited recently and told me she desperately wants to see a mangrove cuckoo. I laughed because I actually know what that bird is — and I saw one the last time we were visiting family down there. She couldn’t believe it.

Then I told her about my painted bunting, and she laughed right back at me. She’s seen one randomly, in Grand Teton of all places. My favorite national park. That’s how birding works — the bird you’ve been chasing shows up for someone who wasn’t even looking.

And then there are the moments you couldn’t have planned. Last year, we booked a boat excursion out of Acadia National Park and saw puffins. Actual puffins! I’m now a person who books birding excursions on purpose, which is maybe the most unbelievable sentence I’ve ever written about myself. 🤣

If any of this sounds appealing, please hear me: you don’t have to do all of it to start. Birding with kids doesn’t have to begin with binoculars, bird feeders, and bird houses all at once. Don’t start with a wish list and a Life List and a boat trip to find puffins.

Start by identifying the birds in your backyard or your neighborhood. Download the free Merlin app and let your kids take a photo of the next bird they see. That’s a beautiful, easy way to start.

Everything I just described happened naturally over four years, one small step at a time, because we followed our kids’ curiosity instead of trying to build a hobby from scratch.

Start small and let their curiosity lead the way.

My free Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable gives your kids a reason to keep moving on the trail — and a competition to finish before you get back to the car.

For less than a gas station snack, my Mini Explorer Packs on Etsy give your kids a real outdoor mission they can run on their own. Print before your next trip and toss it in the car — it takes up zero space and buys you hours.

My Great Smoky Mountains Family Travel Field Guide includes a full week schedule, printable journal pages, and mission cards organized by theme. The planning is already done — pick your campground, print the guide, and show up.