By Andrea Prazmowski, Kitchissippi Times, September 28, 2017
Bev McBride is being interviewed and giving the conversation her full attention, but doesn’t miss a beat when asked what birds she’s noticing, on the shore of the Ottawa River downstream from Westboro Beach. Like rapid-fire, she lists them.
“I hear American Goldfinches over there,” she says, gesturing to the vegetation on her left. “Northern Cardinals in the shrubs along there,” further up the bike path. “Song sparrows all along here, and those are Ring-billed Gulls out on the water.”
Her ears and eyes finely-tuned by decades of birding, Bev’s observations are a revelation to a non-birder, ears straining to discern the Goldfinches’ chirps amidst the thrum of insects and sounds of the river.
https://kitchissippi.com/2017/09/28/important-conversations-about-bird-conservation/