Blind birders in tune with bird sounds, call themselves ‘bird brains’

Jerusalem Crawley grew up in Detroit, where he didn’t have much contact with nature.

“I was a typical city kid and birds were the last thing on my mind,” said Crawley, now 22, who is visually impaired. “I didn’t know one bird from another. I thought they were all the same.”

Then when Crawley was 8, his mom sent him to Camp Tuhsmeheta (short for touch, smell, hear and taste) where he met Donna Posont, who was leading a class about birding.

Posont, who is blind, introduced him and other blind and visually impaired summer campers to the sounds of American robins, blue jays, cardinals, birds of prey and woodpeckers.

“I was immediately fascinated and wanted to learn more,” said Crawley, adding that he was surprised to learn there are more than 11,000 bird species.

Studies have shown that listening to birdsong is beneficial to mental health.

Fourteen years later, Crawley is still an avid birder with Posont’s Birding by Ear and Beyond program at the University of Michigan at Dearborn. It allows people with low vision to study birds in a 120-acre natural area surrounding the university.

Posont, who was born with a genetic eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa and is blind (she does not like to use the term visually impaired), started her monthly birding outings in 2009, with the goal of teaching blind people to explore nature independently.

“Blindness doesn’t need to limit anyone — you can learn about nature and identify trees and plants and birds using the other senses,” said Posont, 67, who lives in Dearborn.

For example, participants in her outings might learn that red maple leaves have rough edges, while silver maple leaves have a soft undercoating.

Blind people usually have heightened senses of hearing, smell and touch, adding to the experience of the excursions. She and her group explore the trails of the university’s nature reserve with their white canes, pausing to listen to the birds swooping overhead or nesting in the trees.

She has learned to identify individual bird songs and calls, she said, explaining that she plays audio recordings in a classroom before taking her group into the woods. Posont’s efforts were recently featured by Audubon.

One month, her class might learn about red-winged blackbirds, she said, while another month, they might stand in the forest and listen for the chatter of American crows. A red-winged blackbird’s song starts with an abrupt note that turns into a musical trill, while an American crow’s call is a more common “caw, caw, caw.”

“We call ourselves ‘bird brains,’” she joked.

She said when she was growing up in the small town of West Liberty, W.V., she never imagined that one day she’d teach others about the avian world she hadn’t seen since she lost her sight in the second grade.

Posont dreamed of studying biology in college, but said she couldn’t find a school with the proper equipment to teach a blind person.

“In 1974, you had to use a microscope to study things,” she said. “That’s the only way they knew how to teach biology then. So instead, I earned a [bachelor’s] degree in social work.”

She and her former husband moved to Michigan, she said, where they raised five children and spent time outdoors whenever possible. In 2008, Posont decided to return to college and study the subjects she’d missed out on in her younger years when computers and high-tech audible devices in the lab didn’t exist.

During summer breaks at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, she started passing along what she’d learned about birds and plants through touch, sound and smell to children at Camp Tuhsmeheta.

“You miss out on a lot in a sighted world if you have to depend on what someone else sees when you’re learning,” said Posont, who graduated from the University of Michigan at Dearborn in 2015 with a degree in environmental studies and a minor in biology.

After the university hired her as a part-time naturalist, Posont expanded the Birding by Ear program. Sighted people are welcome, she said, though they generally accompany friends who are blind.

Fred Wurtzel, 73, has retinitis pigmentosa and completely lost his vision when he was in his 50s. While he’s always loved birds, he’d never studied them or thought of making a birding a hobby until he met Posont, he said.

“Her approach to teaching is very creative, and she makes everyone want to learn more,” Wurtzel said, explaining that Posont’s focus is specifically geared toward touch and sound.

“My favorite birds are probably chickadees, and I also love house finches because they’re beautiful singers,” he said.

He said he also enjoys listening to blue jays, even though they’re “raucous little guys.”

Jenny Wing-Proctor, who lives in Lansing, said she was born blind and enjoyed listening to birds on tape when she was a girl, but she always wondered about their lives and where they lived.

“When I heard about Birding by Ear, I knew it would be a good thing for me to be involved in,” she said. “I’ve always liked being out in nature, surrounded by bird sounds. My favorites are probably the robin or the cardinal because of their pretty songs.”

With bird populations declining at an alarming rate due to habitat loss, pollution and climate change, Posont said it’s more crucial than ever to hand down what she’s learned.

“The world is designed for sighted people, but nature is a place where it’s okay to be blind,” she said. “You can use your other senses to learn why birds and nature are important and how it all works together. To me, that’s the beauty of it.”