Mixing Birding and Business Where Others Don’t Care to Go

I love the idea of bird-watching.

I love birds, I love being out in nature, I love having something to do while I’m out in nature. Too bad I’m really bad at bird-watching. I can spot only the most obvious birds, I can identify only the most easily identifiable. Subtleties escape me. (What color are their feet? Are you kidding me?) If I’m with real bird-watchers and they do the spotting and identifying, I am capable of watching. That’s about it.

I love it anyway.

So I think the people in this New York Times article are cool—they mix birding with business trips. Birder and leadership training consultant, Cyndi Lubecke, of Prospect Heights, Illinois, likes to choose assignments in places with good birding. “My colleagues have loved me for that,” she said, “because my choices were places like Toledo, Ohio, and Fayetteville, Ark.—places they didn’t want to go.”

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be bird-watching (in my own lame fashion) and reporting from the first Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival in Woodward, Oklahoma. (And yes, there is a Greater Prairie Chicken, too. It’s larger and more abundant than the lesser variety.) The birds will be singing and dancing for love. Really. Stay tuned.

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