The Cornell Lab Young Birders Event: Reminder + 2023 Recap

Apply for this year’s Young Birders Event!

A reminder to young birders: get your applications in for the 2024 Young Birders Event in soon! Applications are due March 17th. 

This year’s event will be from June 27 – 30, 2024 in Ithaca, New York. Students will spend four days with Cornell Lab staff learning about different career paths in ornithology, from ecology and art to audio engineering and computer science. All high school-aged birders from anywhere in the world are invited to apply.

The application and more information about this year’s event is available here.

The 2024 Young Birders Event attendees, stopping for a quick photo after a day of birding at Montezuma NWR.

Recap of the 2023 Young Birders Event

In the summer of 2023, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology welcomed 16 high school-aged students from around the world to Ithaca for the 14th annual Young Birders Event. These stellar young birders spent four days learning about career paths in ornithology, attending hands-on workshops with staff and scientists and, of course, getting outside for lots of birding!

Below are accounts of the event written by the attendees themselves. 

Navya – Gujarat, India

April 2023

It was a hot afternoon, and I was studying for a test when my phone suddenly lit up. It was a message from Alli Smith, and my heart skipped a beat as I read the subject line: “YBE ’23 Notification.” I rushed to my brother’s room and showed him the email, my excitement growing with each passing moment. And then, there it was: the magical words that made my heart sing – “Congratulations, you have been accepted!” I couldn’t believe it – I was attending the prestigious young birder’s event ’23!

June 29, 2023

I had an amazing first day at the Robert Purcell Community Center for the birding event. We were welcomed with cool Cornell merch and a talk by the director, Ian Owens, about the making of Cornell Lab and his amazing journey while starting birding. Once our parents departed, we 16 young birders had the best weekend engaging and getting a deep dive into the avian world. We had a short meeting and introduced ourselves and the bird we were excited to see in the upcoming few days. After dinner, we were surprised with a new pair of Binoculars from Zeiss! We then had a chance to hear from Bryce Robinson about his work on Red-tailed Hawks, and their migration patterns. Andy Johnson also shared his work on safeguarding offshore island birds with strategic media. Finally, we headed to our dorms with our assigned dorm mates, excited for the rest of the event. What a great start to a fun-filled weekend!

June 30, 2023

What a fun-filled day we had today, as our group kick-started the day with sound recording session at Shindagin Hollow. We had the pleasure of learning from the brilliant team – Jay McGowan, Andrew Spencer, Tayler Brooks, and Glenn Seeholzer – who taught us all about parabola and shotgun microphones. Emma and I teamed up with Jay and got to experience using both microphones. The Hooded Warbler was the highlight of the session, as we were able to record its incredible vocalizations. 

After a quick snack break, we swapped vans with the birders and headed to Roy H. Park Preserve for more bird-watching with Ian Davies and Jenna Curtis. We even got to search for fossils of shells! Following lunch, we attended some fantastic presentations on science and conservation. Tom Auer talked about visualization and public engagement, Courtney Davis discussed using birds for a sustainable future, and Vera Ting and Maria Klos shared pathways to becoming a science illustrator. Gemma Clucas explained how extracting DNA from fish through the fecal matter of shorebirds is possible, while Tristan Herwood talked about new bird features that engage people. Later, Ian Owens joined us for an interactive session. 

After dinner, we learned about the history and evolution of sound recordings. We even edited and uploaded some of our recordings onto the Merlin app. It was a long and exhausting day, but all the tiredness was suppressed by the feeling of happiness to have learned so much.

July 1, 2023

During the third day of our exciting event, we had the pleasure of visiting Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, where we were thrilled to observe the birds like the Trumpeter Swan and Cerulean Warbler. It was a great way to end the first session. We then indulged in a delicious lunch at Wolffy’s, a local eatery that served some of the best food in town.

After lunch, we decided to make a quick stop at Taughannock Falls, a breathtaking natural attraction with stunning views. The falls were simply magnificent, and we took some time to appreciate the beauty of nature before heading back to the dorms for some much-needed rest.

Later in the day, we had the opportunity to attend a series of presentations by current undergraduate students at Cornell, which was quite informative and insightful. We also visited the Museum of Vertebrates, where we saw a variety of taxidermied birds, some of which were quite old and extinct, dating back to the 1800s. It was fascinating to see such a diverse collection of birds, but at the same time, it was a bit sad to contemplate the loss of these beautiful creatures.

After an eventful day, we returned to our dorms, where we found some young birders hanging out and playing games. However, my dorm mate Emma and I decided to spend our time talking till late, exchanging stories and experiences from our adventure-filled day. It was a wonderful way to end an unforgettable day.

July 2, 2023

I still can’t believe how quickly the time flew by! It was the last day of the event and we were up and going early, but this time it was bittersweet because we had to drop off our suitcases at the community center. Our last birding session was at the Lindsay-Parsons biodiversity park and our main target bird for the day was the Virginia Rail, which we did manage to catch a glimpse of, but not as clearly as we had hoped. Despite the cloudy weather, I still consider it a successful last session. Back at the community center where it all started, we had lunch and our team leader Alli gave the last presentation about her work on Burrowing Owls. We finished with some closing paperwork questions and a talk given by our amazing team leaders, Ian Davies and Alli Smith.

Looking at rare and extinct bird specimens in the collections at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates

Anish – California, USA

We arrived in isolated Ithaca, New York for the Young Birders Event. Fifteen accomplished birders were all there, too. It was my first time seeing so many other fellow birders at once. In my two years of birding, I’ve learned that, more than any warbler or sparrow, fellow young birders are perhaps the hardest find. 

YBE gives birders the opportunity to meet with fellow birders across the globe. On our daily trips through Montezuma National Wildlife Ridge, Shindagin Hollow, etc., I found others who shared my love for birds for the first time. Having made friends with fellow young birders and seeing the community of Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology during YBE makes me know I’m part of a bigger community even back home in California.

Furthermore, YBE makes following unconventional career paths possible. Before attending, I had no idea that my interest in computer science would be so applicable to ornithology. Seeing up close the team & systems behind the tools that birders always use – eBird, Merlin, and more – makes a career combining the two much more approachable for me. Through YBE, I’ve gained perspective on not just birding but my future.

In short, I could not be more grateful to YBE and the team that makes it possible. 

Looking for waterfowl and cranes at Montezuma NWR

Avery – Connecticut, USA

An Illustrated Guide to Bird Pictionary: YBE 2023 Edition
JULY 1, 2023
~3:00 PM

After a long, fulfilling day of birding, we returned to the dorms to give everyone an opportunity to rest and recharge. I dropped my binoculars and other belongings off in my room and then made a beeline for the lounge, with no other intent than to simply relax. Several other young birders were already there, including a couple of friends I had made. For a little while, we kept to ourselves – understandably, everyone was tired.

At some point, one birder asked if anyone would be interested in playing Bird Pictionary. With great intrigue, myself and a few others assented, and after a few moments, we began to play. The rules were simple: guess the bird species correctly, and earn a point for your team. There was just one stipulation: you had to indirectly illustrate the species, fixating on depicting the words in the bird’s name – e.g. Roseate Spoonbill might have a picture of a rose and a kitchen spoon. And so it began: Team Red-bellied Woodpeckers (RBW) vs. Team Nighthawks!

Initially, I was reluctant to draw – I had little experience in Pictionary or any similar games and seriously doubted whether or not my drawing skills were up to par. Also, some of us still weren’t super well-acquainted with one another, so it was slightly awkward at first. Any tension quickly dissipated as the rounds went on. Each team kept score, and for the most part, the game was pretty even, with astute guesses and hilarious drawings from everyone. One species that I particularly enjoyed depicting was a Northern Mockingbird, for which I shaded the northern half of a crude US map and drew a stick figure person getting mocked by another. I masterfully added a speech bubble containing “haha” to seal the deal. By the time our two-hour break was over, we were all having a blast, and I found myself not wanting to leave. Luckily, we only had to wait a few hours before Round 2.

By the time we got back from a behind-the-scenes tour at the Lab of Ornithology and returned to the lounge room, it felt much different. Like the tiger lilies garnishing the sides of Tompkins County’s roads, a sense of camaraderie had begun to blossom among us. We no longer kept score – the RBW vs. Nighthawks saga became a distant memory. Each round was accompanied by hilarious confusion and a special moment of pure joy when someone figured it out and the group erupted in laughter. I felt like I had found my people.

Round 2 featured a variety of species and drew the interest of a larger crowd – including Alli and Ian. On trickier rounds, guesses accumulated like trinkets in a bowerbird’s nest until, in a eureka moment, someone would exclaim, “Northern Rough-winged Swallow”! Our final round, a Barnacle Goose, was by far the longest, requiring a series of enigmatic drawings and hints and taking well over fifteen minutes. I really don’t quite remember how someone finally managed to get it, just that the whiteboard was pretty much entirely covered with marker ink by that point. Needless to say, it was a great way to wrap the game up.

Though the Young Birder’s Event was chock-full of learning and birding, playing Bird Pictionary was indisputably the crown jewel. To me, it represented the essence of birdwatching and what made it such an enriching hobby. Bird Pictionary wasn’t about competition or self-gain. It was about the people we met along the way. The conversations we had. The laughter and excitement we shared, and the memories we made. It took ten years of birdwatching for me to discover Bird Pictionary, but it was well worth the wait.

Searching for warblers and tanagers at Lindsay-Parsons Biodiversity Preserve

Ethan – Pennsylvania, USA

For some, compiling birds on a life list intrigues them. For others, the diverse collection of birds in the Museum of Vertebrates captivates them. Then again, some enjoy learning about ornithological research alongside what makes eBird run behind the scenes. For me, I most enjoyed sound recording with the “real” equipment accompanied by the brilliant people overseeing the Macaulay Library. In summary, the Young Birders Event has something for any young birder to enjoy.

On the first day, we adventured to Shindagin Hollow to sound record—my most wanted activity of the whole event. There, the esteemed Jay McGowan introduced himself along with several other renowned sound recordists, the same recordists whose eBird profiles I had researched in awe at all of the media they had collected over the years without thinking that I would one day meet them or ever have the chance to use the same sound recording equipment they use. A dedicated hiker also emerged from the middle of the woods and greeted Jay.

“Hey, Jay!” he exclaimed.

“Mornin’, Lang” Jay replied.

Nobody can describe my utter disbelief when I heard the name Lang. I dismissed it since there was no possible way that was Lang Elliot, the Lang Elliott. Until Jay verified my suspicions and nonchalantly said “Yeah, that’s Lang Elliott, a seasoned sound recordist at the Macaulay Library.”

Suddenly, I remembered my nestling birding days, amazed at the Song Sparrows and Wood Thrush songs in my yard. Lang Elliott’s inspirational clips on YouTube are the videos I always go back to; likewise, I am possibly his biggest fan on Spotify. I never thought that I would be standing mere feet from him for even a brief moment just a few years later. I must express my gratitude for him being a massive spark in my birding interest, first with their songs. 

“Quick, say something intelligent,” whispered my inner psyche.

“He’s on Spotify!!!” I eagerly yelped, to which Jay replied, “He is? Wow!”

Following this incredible encounter with one of the most distinguished bird sound recordists of all time, I had the extraordinary opportunity to record birds in the same location as these experts using their equipment. This was the real deal—parabolic reflectors and shotgun microphones—alongside the people in charge at the Macaulay Library.

I had the honour of recording with Andrew Spencer, whose name I had seen a few hundred times on various recordings on Merlin and in the Macaulay Library. We recorded several of the most spectacular bird songs—Winter Wrens, Veeries, and everything in between. 

I had an exciting experience in the forest; unfortunately, it ended too soon. As the afternoon sun crept higher into the sky, we transitioned from the wondrous woods to the historic halls of the Macaulay Library with a brief history given by Jay McGowan himself. We learned about the legends behind the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and its founders, then took a tour of the files hosted in the archive. Jay educated us on some of the over hundred-year-old audio tapes and original photographs as we looked in awe—an unforgettable experience. After we toured the Macaulay Library, Jay expertly guided us through processing our audio recordings from earlier in the day. I had a blast editing the recordings and witnessing the process from the experts.

But that wasn’t all; they even showed us how to annotate our recordings. Annotation means drawing a box around a spectrogram of a bird’s sound, which can be done at different levels—every bird vocalizing in a recording or only the focal species. It helps power Merlin Sound ID and makes annotators feel empowered to know that people use it to assist in identifying birds. Throughout the event, I learned a ton about eBird and Merlin; moreover, I contributed to a massive project that initially interested me in birding.

The following few afternoons, we attended many informative presentations by successful pioneers in ornithology. Bird lovers at heart, resonated with all of us and educated us on their role in or out of the lab. From computer scientists to researchers in the field, integral bird conservationists through many means, and still many more, we understood the lab’s diverse background.

The Cornell Lab Young Birders Event not only solidified my passion for the entire sound recording process, but it brought me together with avid young birders across the globe. Likewise, it allowed me to meet numerous well-known birders from the lab and researchers from far and wide. Any young birder will find something captivating about this event, no matter their interests. Not only did I gain a wealth of knowledge about ornithological research and acquire a few new birds for my life list, but I acquired unparalleled connections.

Getting practice using different types of microphones to record bird song in Shindagin Hollow State Forest

Want to apply for the 2024 Young Birders Event? More information is available here!