Birding with Baby and Toddler- Take what you can get

If you want to go birding and you have a four month old and a three year old, take what you can get.

Birding with a Threenager

Three going on thirteen, right? Just as I needed to adapt my birding to a newborn, then a toddler, I am now dealing with a whole new animal: the threenager.

The mental leaps she has gone through in the last year are mind-boggling. I used to think of her as the velociraptor in Jurassic Park learning to open the door; now she’s a pretty much a cunning tactician, negotiating, playing emotions, employing every trick she knows and learning new strategies as she goes.

She’s not just getting smarter. Now she remembers things, like how the playground is right over there. She now also has the confidence and leg strength to run off and make it to the playground on her own.

Birding with a five-day old

Despite having had one kid already, the first few days with a new one I felt like I forgot how to do everything. How do I hold a newborn? How do I get through the night when needing to wake up every few hours? How do I keep this little human alive?

After returning from the hospital and then taking the baby by subway to the first check-up, I felt buoyed by reports of good health for the little one. Naturally, then, I took the baby birding.

Birding with baby and toddler- Get them involved!

Perspective of a toddler? She snapped this one!

I was sitting on a small bridge on a trail, watching shorebirds in a marsh. She seemed to be enjoying brushing her hands on the wildflowers along the edge and stamping back and forth along the bridge itself. An adult Bald Eagle flew over and I stood up to snap a few quick pics. The bird started to circle. It was probably one of my better chances to get a good photo of an eagle in flight. But I looked down at my daughter, now tugging on my pant leg. She wanted the camera, because it has buttons and a screen, and it is a fun toy. I put the camera down and picked her up instead. I pointed to the eagle, and we watched it as circled directly overhead twice more, then rode a wind to the south. I did not get the photograph, but we shared a moment that has more meaning than megapixels.

Birding with baby and toddler- adjust your expectations

Be prepared to adjust your expectations about a lot of things when you have a kid. The same is true of birding with one.

You can totally go birding with your young one starting within weeks of birth and through the terrible twos. As it was for me, it may require you to be flexible in expectations of what a birding excursion looks like, what your attention will be spent on, and how you actually go about finding birds.

Birding with Baby and Toddler- Toy Binoculars

Your kid will want your toys. Get used to it.

Those toy binoculars made for kids are only temporary decoys. Our kid knows we don’t use them and wants what we have.

Birding with baby and toddler- wear them!

We don’t use a stroller, although I could see a stroller working in some birding situations. Instead, we use baby carriers. Cloth wraps worked when baby was light and small, and we switched to baby carriers with back support and strong straps as baby grew into toddler.

Wearing our baby allowed us to walk trails that a stroller would struggle with. It also allows hands-free walking for pulling binoculars to our eyes.

Birding with baby and toddler

In 2015, I started my most exciting bird adventure. My wife and I had our own little baby bird. Actually a little human, but you get the idea.

We first took out baby within 2 weeks of her birth. In her first year, she visited city parks, two state parks, and a national wildlife refuge. I am sure people thought we are crazy, but being birders, they already thought such things of us.