This post was updated 7/05/2025.
First off, I am not a Millennial. This is an homage to Millennial women birders. They really got this birding-is-cool thing going for the masses.
I am a humble Generation X representative, a generation perhaps too small in population and too self consciously close to Baby Boomers to make much of a cultural shift in the pastime of birding. A pastime that has had a stuffy, competitive and lofty reputation for the people who practice it as observed by those who do not.
And sexist. If you want to read an infuriating study that points out the gender differences in birding practitioners, whose title alone tells you where it’s going: Gender-Based Differences in Birdwatchers' Participation and Commitment.
“Commitment.” Huh. The 2008 study concludes women are less committed to birding by definition of expertise and time on the ground doing the thing. The study never mentions the slate of constraints women face in participating at all: physical barriers, personal safety, caregiving responsibilities, racial identity, outright hostility from those in charge maintaining the birding hegemony (men and women both—this study was co-written by a woman).
Since donning my birder hat years ago in my early 20s, I was used to being the only birder in the room (or field, to be more accurate) under 30, and quite possibly the only woman under 30 there at all. Birding wasn’t something most of my same-age friends wanted to do.
When explaining to peers my zeal for watching wild birds, people were receptive to the idea of birding as a novelty, but rarely interested in joining me. “Yeh, that’s cool,” they’d say in that Gen X way of dismissing something with a pseudo affirmative.
Happily, those days are over. Now when I share birding exploits with peers, they want in on it.
Birding is now mainstream thanks to Millennial women
Yup, that’s my observation as someone who’s lived a full lifetime as a birder, waiting for the cultural shift and finally seeing it arrive.
Plenty of venerated women have made their mark in birding media before me, and with me. But none of us moved the needle into the mainstream until younger women stepped in. Using their social media savvy, their skill for inclusive language, their creativity and their networking visibility, they are bringing birding to new audiences more than anyone I have witnessed in the years I’ve been beating the birding-is-cool drum to my (what was once) younger female cohort.
Now I am the middle aged birder and it’s the youngsters bringing birding into the mainstream, and in particular, this current generation of women in their 20s (as of this writing update, these women I wrote about first in 2018 are now in their 30s).
What are they doing differently than earlier generations?
Organizing using the internet and social media.
Teaching themselves in real time in the field.
Inviting an expansive group of others to join them and deliberately planning for it.
Defining birding as a practice that brings personal peace and satisfaction, cultivates a community of safety for practitioners, and drives social justice as well as a conservation ethic.
The women here are all under 30—some barely over 20—and each one is breathing new life into this pastime through example of time in the field her way.
Tiffany Adams at the West 90 Samish Island birding area, Bow, WA. Courtesy of Tiffany Adams.
Adams leading a bird walk for New York City Audubon in Floyd Bennett Field, 2014. Courtesy of Tiffany Adams.
New identities of birding outside the historic demographic
I first heard Tiffany Adams on the podcast Sound Effect from the local NPR affiliate KNKX in Seattle. She was talking about her love of birding with her friend Rasheena Fountain. Go and listen to the 10 minute clip and you will be as intrigued as I was after hearing her story. She is determined to rewrite the narrative of what a typical birder looks like, considering that she has encountered few other women of color on her birding path.
Adams, 28, got her start birding in NYC, where she is from, joining a birding meet up in Central Park. From there, she expanded her practice through bird walks and eventually led her own bird walks as a volunteer for NYC Audubon. She has made a name for herself in the North American birding community as an expert for urban birding, and spoke about her experience as a speaker at the 2018 Biggest Year in American Birding at the Black Swamp Bird Observatory in Ohio.
“Birding is an escape for me,“ she says, of her love of solitary birding. “But even when I try to escape people, I meet amazing people through birding!”
Inaugural weekend of the Chicago Feminist Bird Club. L to R Feminist Bird Club founder Molly Adams, Chicago chapter founders Bridget Kiernan and Frances Kane, May 2018. Courtesy of Bridget Kiernan and Frances Kane.
Birding for humanity
Another New Yorker, Molly Adams, 28, is quietly becoming one of the most famous Millennial birders in the country, through her founding of the Feminist Bird Club in 2016. Seeing a need for a safe, inclusive group for women, LGBTQ, non-binary, trans and people of color wanting to bird in the city, she put out the word on her social media and organized her first bird walk. What was intended for just her own city quickly caught hold in the ambitions of other young women around the country, and world. “Many of our members would not necessarily consider themselves women, and they’re most often the people who feel the least safe and unwelcome in traditional birding settings,” says Adams. “I try to articulate that the club focuses on the safety of (all) identities.”
Adams had identified and organized a movement of young birders wanting something more, specifically with a social justice angle. Adams has been featured in the New York Times and interviewed on the ABA podcast. Holding down a full time job and coordinating monthly walks and the expansion of the Feminist Bird Club has proven to be a nice problem to have, but Adams is still concerned about doing it thoughtfully.
Karla Noboa (left, with blue wrist watch) leading a bird walk in Boston. Courtesy of Karla Noboa.
The resonance of Feminist Bird Club among Millennials (and the rest of the birding community)
Karla Noboa, 25, of Boston felt out of place on most birding walks, often being the only young woman, and the only person of color. When she learned of the Feminist Bird Club model, she contacted Adams and kicked off the first satellite chapter of the Feminist Bird Club in Boston . A natural curiosity for the outdoors is what fueled Noboa’s interest in birding. “I studied Natural Resources in college and want to know what every plant and animal is any time I’m outside!” she says. She now leads near monthly Club walks in the Boston area.
Frances Kane and Bridget Kiernan, both 22, started the Chicago chapter of Feminist Bird Club while still college students. In fact, they met in a bird identification class, which inspired them to take on birding as a life practice. Like Noboa, they did not know Adams prior, and were inspired by reading about her to reach out via Instagram and to start the Chicago chapter of the Feminist Bird Club.
Molly Adams’s model for the Feminist Bird Club appealed to all three women, as they wanted to bird on their terms. The idea that you could run a birding walk with novices and all learn together gave each woman a different way to learn and grow as a birder, without the traditional structure of an expert leading.
Taking the hierarchy out of birding to grow the pastime
“Guided bird walks have been intimidating for me in the past, because I couldn’t keep up with the pace that the guide would be able to identify birds,” says Kane. “I think that structure of a guided bird walk where there is a single expert feeds into the stereotype of birding being something you need to be good at/something reserved for other experts, versus a way to simply enjoy your natural surroundings.”
There is one aspect of traditional birding Feminist Bird Club chapters follow: birding protocols. The group adheres to the ABA Birding Ethics standard for their walks, and educate others who join them to do the same. The members featured in this story use eBird and apps and other birding aids when in the field (minus playbacks, which the group does not endorse).
Birding as each woman does outside the traditional birding organization, they draw artists, activists, all ranges of professionals and a decidedly younger crowd. The Feminist Bird Club model specifically invites participants not represented in the mainstream birding world, and offers a safe place to learn about birds. As a result, curious non-birders join and leave forever changed. “Opening birding up to those beyond the hobby’s typical demographic is valuable and increases public urgency towards issues like climate change and environmental degradation,” says Kane.
Ultimately, what makes these millennial women effective birding advocates is the ease with which they navigate sharing their experience with others—even as some might describe themselves as introverts—and their intent toward greater good for the humanity who’s birding.
“I enjoy the duality of birding as both personal and social, birding has allowed me to connect with people I would not have encountered otherwise and I am proud and excited to fostering a birding community in Chicago and to be a part of the birding community at large!” says Kiernan.
This story was updated July 3, 2025. Since this post was first published in 2018, Feminist Bird Club is now a registered non-profit with chapters across North America, and sibling clubs in Latin America.