‘I had no one to bird with who wasn’t 20 years older than me’: Meet the Gen Zers who transformed grandma’s hobby into an analog craze

In 2021, 15-year-old Ian Bell began birdwatching in Central Park alone, often as the only teenager in the park. Bell expressed feeling lonely, stating, "I had no one to bird with who wasn’t 20 years older than me." However, five years later, Bell co-runs a Discord server with 4,400 members who share bird sighting alerts—a sign of birding's growing popularity among Gen Zers.

This trend is reflected in Cornell University's birding club, which has seen a surge in membership, and federal surveys indicating birding participation among 25-to-34-year-olds has quadrupled since 2016.

The rise of birding among Gen Zers can be attributed to a combination of factors, including technology and the desire for offline experiences. The free bird-identification app Merlin, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has seen a dramatic increase in users, growing from 279,000 in July 2019 to over 4.8 million in July 2026. The app helps beginners identify common bird species using Cornell's eBird database.

Chris Wood, director of eBird, attributes the hobby's newfound appeal to Gen Z to its status as a cool and accessible activity. Bird watching has transformed from a niche pastime to a way for people to connect with nature and each other. Wood added, "Bird watching, I think, used to be sort of a very, very niche thing, and now it is a cool thing.

It's a mechanism that gets people outside and gets people in touch with nature, and then a percentage of those people start really understanding, learning those birds, and then they put their phone away completely."

The National Audubon Society has also noted the growing presence of young people in birding, with its college campus chapter count increasing from zero to 117 in six years. The organization is witnessing a surge in supporters aged 20 to 30 on social media. However, young people often downplay their initial interest in birding, focusing more on the community and mentorship they find in the hobby.

Shawn Wallace, 22, was introduced to birding by his college resident advisor, who invited him to go fishing and spot a tufted duck, a rare bird in New York. Wallace explained, "We spent like four hours looking for it, and we didn’t find it. But then after that, whenever he went out, I tried to go out with him and I just continued down the rabbit hole."

Jennifer Lodi-Smith, a psychologist at Canisius University, has collected birding origin stories from over 600 participants, with two-thirds of the stories being interpersonal rather than about the birds themselves, mirroring Wallace's own experience. "I don’t have a single spark-bird moment. I have spark people," she commented.

These personal connections and mentorship play a crucial role in attracting young people to birding. Robert Buckert, a long-time birder and mentor to Wallace, emphasized the importance of the birding community's giving and supportive nature. He explained, "Birding's strength is its giving and wonderful community full of mentors that welcomes young people and gives them a place to learn and belong, something they're missing in the digital age."

Wallace, having become Buckert's first mentee, has since encouraged others to join the hobby by convincing them to buy bird feeders or download the Merlin app.