Love, pie, and bipartisanship: Behind the scenes at America’s biggest birding festival
People of all stripes flock to the Biggest Week, not only to spot rare birds but to participate in a growing community of recreational birders.
Oak Harbor, Ohio — “Over there!” A tall young man points above the crowd. “Where the two logs are. One arches up and toward the left. A magnolia is moving in the branches.”
Named after the tree in which they were discovered, male magnolia warblers are striking birds, with a coal-black mask and a brilliant yellow belly covered with a dark “necklace.” Bodies and binoculars twist for a glimpse. Camera shutters clatter furiously, and then only birdsong fills the air again.
I’m at the boardwalk of Magee Marsh Wildlife Area in Oak Harbor, Ohio, for the annual 10-day Biggest Week in American Birding Festival, created in 2010 by the conservation organization, Black Swamp Bird Observatory. Migrating songbirds, especially warblers, stop here every May, one of the major flyways for bird migration.
The largest birding festival in the U.S., it attracts upward of 90,000 people, bringing in around $40 million to the local economy. Birders flood the area’s wetlands and parks, including the boardwalk at Magee, so much that local birder Dave Rodriguez describes it as “a slow mosh pit.” (Read what happens to your brain when you see a bird in nature.)
Birding has become more popular than ever, fueled in part by the pandemic and an interest in nature. In 2023, a record two million checklists—or lists of birds sighted at any given time—were submitted to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology app eBird in one month.
Birding enthusiasm is hard to contain. “I pretty much spent whatever I had coming in, and it went out just that fast. Plus five credit cards,” Greg Miller, a Biggest Week guide and birder based in Sugarcreek, Ohio, tells National Geographic.
Miller is kind of a big deal in the avian world: He inspired the character Brad Harris, played by Jack Black, in the movie The Big Year. The film follows the earnest Black, along with Steve Martin and Owen Wilson, as they crisscross the country, competing for the Big Year record—a type of treasure hunt to see the most bird species in a year.
A similar energy ripples through the gathering today. “When a rare bird shows up at Magee Marsh, people will leave wherever they’re at and run to go see whatever has showed up, Miller says.
As I walked the boardwalk, I saw these thick crowds gathering to see the latest star—a blackburnian warbler, a nesting green heron, or an eastern screech owl tucked away in a tree.
For many birders, though, it’s the human community that draws them.
“I meet people from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of walks of life—extroverts, introverts,” says Miller. “And they're just out looking for something fun to do that’s not a part of regular life.”
Bipartisan birding
In 2002, Karen Zach had brain surgery. “I was 45 years old, in excellent health, a career teacher, and I was told I couldn’t teach anymore,” says Zach, a birder from Toledo, Ohio. “So I was looking for a way, something to feel passionate about.” After a guided bird walk, that passion became birds. She volunteered with BSBO and now Biggest Week is also a reunion.
“For me,” says Zach, “it was as much about seeing the migrating birds as it was seeing the migrating humans who come to see the migrating birds.” (See tips on how to get started as a birder.)
Kenn Kaufman, author of the new book, The Birds That Audubon Missed, did his big year at age 16, when he dropped out of school and hiked across the country. But counter to the film, he downplays the idea that birders are mainly obsessed with bagging the most species. “When you're working on a list, it's mostly competition with yourself,” says Kaufman, who lives in Oak Harbor. “I don't know right now who holds the big year record.”
Birding, he says, is mostly about experiences that bring people together. “I've got friends who are extremely conservative and friends who are extremely liberal,” Kaufman points out, “and you'll see them out birding side by side.”
The festival’s keynote speaker, Christian Cooper, author of Better Living Through Birding, and host of the National Geographic show, Extraordinary Birder, touched on the need for greater inclusion, especially for people of color. And in a show of bipartisanship, representatives from both senators from Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican J.D. Vance, also spoke at the opening ceremony.
Lovebirds
Sometimes birder camaraderie turns romantic.
At Maumee Bay Lodge and Conference Center, the social hub for the festival, I found Erro Lehnert giving a welcoming hug to Miller. Lehnert, a biologist and guide, met her fiancé, artist Christina Baal, at The Biggest Week in 2015 and they are now planning a bird-themed wedding.
“Everyone has to dress up like a bird,” says Baal. They both laugh.
“She’s gonna be a condor. I'm gonna be an albatross,” says Erro. “And it's for real. If you don't dress up as a bird at our wedding, you get the rubber chicken of shame hung around your neck.”
When they first met, not many women guides were under 40, but the couple tells me that the demographic is getting younger and more diverse. (Learn how AI-powered apps are helping save birds.)
“One of the great things about being here is that you can be totally open about everything,” says Baal. “I've always felt really safe here … all of my friends now, in my adult life, I've met at Biggest Week.”
Spreading the gospel
Lifelong birder Rob Ripma of Carmel, Indiana, has been birding at Magee long before there was a festival, but it was at the Biggest Week that he met photographer Brian Zwiebel. They started Sabrewing Nature Tours, which takes guests birding across the globe.
“When you go through the parking lot of Magee Marsh,” says Ripma, “and see license plates from all over the country, hear multiple languages being spoken on the boardwalk, meet people from all over the world—it’s pretty interesting to have one location that you can really do all that in.”
He tells me that he's seen a lot of new faces. “People,” says Ripma, "are learning more about the community, and wanting to be involved.”
After an exhilarating morning, I head to Blackberry Corners Tavern, a well-known stop for many Biggest Week attendees celebrating a lifer (a species seen for the first time) with a slice of pie. My lifer today is a gray-cheeked thrush; my pie is Cherry Berry.
The restaurant is packed with faces I saw earlier on the boardwalk. Birders from across the world are sharing stories and dessert—a mixed flock on their own migration, following the birds.
