Any festival or event that celebrates your favourite things puts a spring in your step, and a grin on your face. So for me, Vancouver Bird Week is a perfect fit: spotlighting my favourite activity.

Vancouver Bird Week Runs runs May 6-13 and celebrates Vancouver’s birds.

Spring boarding off of World Migratory Bird Day, a United Nations-sponsored initiative (May 10 this year) that recognizes the importance of birds as key indicators of our environment’s health, Vancouver Bird Week was founded. During Bird Week, there are bird-related workshops, walks, talks, exhibitions, and lectures across Vancouver. Most events are free. Check them out.

Now that I have set up this site and its associated social media accounts, I am ‘outed’ as a bird watcher, something not too many people actually know about me.

We are lucky in Vancouver that we have a wide variety of birds that love our climate, so it is simple enough to just watch songbirds from our kitchen windows.  I love the frequent visitors to mine: chickadees and bush-tits,finches, sparrows and woodpeckers. I love raptors but see them less, and just down the road from my home is the Fraser River so I see ducks and water fowl all the time too. I drag my family into it with my enthusiasm and we look up the birds together.

I live in a birder’s paradise, and I am happy to celebrate it.

I was asked about my thoughts on birding by the Westender – and was flattered to share my thoughts on the health and fitness side of birding. Give it a read.

And for bird week, I hope you get out there and spot a new one.

Are you a bird watcher? What do you like about it?