Chris Wright will give attendees information about 30 bird species you may see in your yard so that you will be able to identify them on the lawn or at the feeder. Many of these birds are familiar to everyone, but each of them has a story, and usually, a song, and these details make them memorable and identifiable. You will find that 30 birds are not so many, and you can recognize each of them just as you recognize each of your neighbors.

Chris grew up near American University and his parents had a bird feeder. They taught him to recognize bird songs and tell a robin from a cardinal, but he confesses he didn’t pay close attention to birds in those days. As a librarian he spent 28 years at the Library of Congress, working in some of the most glorious indoor spaces in the nation, but always wishing he were outdoors. But as a hiker and gardener, his focus was usually on plants. He says he didn’t really “see” birds until he was with two friends on a ferry ride when they got into a heated debate about the identity of a gull flying astern the ship. Intrigued, he began looking at birds more closely. These friends then took him on a birding trip in South Africa, and he was hooked.

When Chris retired in 2003, he joined the DC Audubon chapter and went on many, many bird trips to fabulous birding places in the United States like Big Bend in Texas and the Florida Everglades. Eventually, he saw almost all the birds one can normally see in the Lower 48 (his U.S. life list is 629 species), but now he concentrates on seeing birds in Montgomery County. In his yard alone, he’s logged 85 species.

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