David Lindo - The Urban Birder
Tom Bailey - Bird Watching Magazine
Urban Birding is a wonderful thing. Right on your city doorsteps you can discover the most amazing variety of birdlife.
I've seen some truly incredible birds in a whole variety of cities. Vaux's Swifts careering with the backdrop of grimy downtown LA. Rufous-backed Thrushes in the middle of madness in Mexico City. Hawfinches near the astronomical clock in Renaissance Prague. Orange-breasted Sunbirds flitting in sunny Cape Town and singing perched on a TV aerial on Greek Street in the middle of London's bustling Soho, a Black Redstart.
The mantra for an Urban Birder is simple: Anything can turn up anywhere at anytime. Follow that simple thought and you'll be surprised at what you might find.
A few useful tips.
1. Look up and look around (a bit like you do on the first day you arrive in Manhattan, New York City).
2. Keep a spare set of 'bins' close by. (I usually keep mine around my neck.)
3. Ignore me and do it your way.
I've been a birder since my days in the womb. I was born in London and raised not a million miles away from my main local urban patch, Wormwood Scrubs.
The Scrubs can be found in West London, 5 minutes from the BBC's Television Centre. Although famous for its notorious prison and jailbirds including Michael Caine in the original 'The Italian Job' as well as featuring in the lyrics of The Jam's 'Down At the Tube Station At Midnight', The Scrubs is also now famed for some of the feathered birds it attracts.
Let me know about your Urban Birding experiences and the places you visit.
Keep finding those birds.