On May 18, 2025, the first national Blind Birders Bird-a-Thon took place in 34 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, and Venezuela. More than 200 legally blind participants joined groups or birded alone, in locations from backyards to prime birding habitats. It was a signature moment to draw our community to the outdoors and discover the joys of birding by ear.

The organizers, all birders who are blind (Jerry Berrier and me from Massachusetts and Donna Posont from Michigan), and our partner, the nonprofit Birdability, had no idea what the response would be to something never before attempted. We were pleasantly surprised at the geographic breadth of participation as well as the interest not only among the legally blind community but also among sighted birders eager to help. Prior to the event, we held virtual informational sessions to introduce tools for learning bird songs, such as using mnemonics to associate a bird song with words easier to remember, the Merlin Bird ID app, and Larkwire, a game-based app for mastering bird songs. We fielded many questions from sighted birders eager to support legally blind birders on how best they could assist. We shared materials to provide guidance on sighted assistance (for an excellent tutorial on how to guide a blind person, see this Town of Brookline video: https://brooklineinteractive.org/how-to-guide-a-person-with-vision-loss/). This event turned out to be as educational and meaningful for the sighted volunteers as it was for our participants.