Organizing an inclusive Big Sit: Lessons and reflections to help make yours a success!
Ensure key accessibility information is included in promotion materials so folks know they are welcome.
Organizing a Big Sit on the occasion of Mass Audubon’s Bird-a-thon this year was an incredible learning experience for me. It turns out that being intentionally inclusive is even more rewarding than I’d thought it could be! I thought it would be great to reflect on the lessons I learned (and the mistakes that I made) this spring so that your stationary accessible birding event can be the best possible version of itself.
Make sure to scout out the location at least once before your event. Ideally, your circle should be in a wheelchair accessible area. This greatly limited our locational options in western Massachusetts, and was challenging to fully achieve. The path to reach your circle should at least be on flat and stable ground. (For more information about features that make up an accessible birding location, check out Birdability’s Access Considerations.)
Hopefully your location will be visibly adjacent to a parking lot, and if there isn’t already a designated accessible parking spot, feel free to use traffic cones to block off sufficient space for a van. To my utter embarrassment, I had not noticed that the shortest and most evident path from the parking lot to our circle had become overgrown from lack of trail maintenance. The circle was still accessible via a longer (by several hundred feet) wheelchair accessible path, but it was horrifying to find a birder with a mobility challenge struggling halfway to the circle because they followed the most apparent path. To help you avoid similar innocent mistakes, consider submitting a Birdability Site Review to the Birdability Map. There’s more information about how to do that here.
Clear signs from the carpark. Photo courtesy of Meghadeepa Maity.
Our Big Sit was a 24-hour event, with dozens of birders taking shifts to count birds. I’d thought that the circle was pretty visible from the parking lot, but while navigating awkward shift changes and trying to reach the circle in the dark, I realized that I needed to demarcate a path from the parking lot to the circle with high-visibility fluorescent markings and traffic cones. We also placed a large blackboard welcoming participants in the parking area.
Consider holding the sit in an area accessible by public transport. Because the public transportation system in western Massachusetts is severely underdeveloped, I decided to focus my efforts on coordinating carpooling for the handful of participants who did not use their own vehicles.
All habitats are good for birding, but where accessibility and inclusion are concerned, not all hotspots are created equal. Place your circle at the confluence of several habitats and ecosystems, with good visibility and at a distance where one can easily hear birds. This will allow participants to play to the best of their strengths and abilities.
Our Big Sit circle. Photo courtesy of Meghadeepa Maity.
If all of you are beginning the event simultaneously, start out by encouraging everyone to introduce themselves with their names and pronouns. If, like at my event, you have birders flitting in and out of the circle between shifts, it might be smarter to leave name tags and a marker around for folks to write their names and pronouns on.
Each body is most comfortable birding from a different seating (or standing) arrangement. We had folks bring along their favourite camping chairs, but also had a combination of standard folding chairs and stools available for kids and adults. I also put a picnic blanket down on the grass and I personally loved birding from the ground, especially later in the day when we had eyes on the sky for hawks!
Everybody will have a difference preference for sitting, standing or lying down. Photo by Dan Bisaccio.
Like it or not, we are still very much in the middle of a pandemic, and we all have different definitions of what feels safe (even outdoors). Don’t let this be an afterthought! At minimum, you should ask everyone to bring a mask. My rule of thumb is that if even one person in the circle feels uncomfortable without everyone else masked, then everyone wears a mask. Perhaps you only want vaccinated individuals to attend the event, and perhaps you want to have a limited number of individuals in the circle at a time. We had set out extra disposable masks and disinfecting wipes (for sharing optics). Please keep in mind that some folks are unable to wear a mask, while others can’t be vaccinated because of a health issue.
Beginner birders may need extra support to feel welcome in traditional birding spaces. My estimate is that about a quarter of my Big Sit participants had not previously attended any birding event. To facilitate this, I had extra pairs of binoculars to share, and I made sure that each shift had at least one expert birder around to welcome and guide beginners, and model ethical birding.
Shifts across the 24 hour period made the event flexible (and so accessible) to many. Photo by Jak Karpinski Anderson.
Once you’ve put a lot of thought into creating an inclusive event, it’s important to make sure that your inclusivity is apparent to potential participants. A great way to make everyone feel included is to be intentional about the language you use while spreading the word about your event; there’s more information in Writing bird outing event descriptions. This can look like a line in your event flyer explicitly stating that “BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled and beginner birders are welcome.” You might consider using the term “birding” rather than “birdwatching”; beginners who find the term “birder” intimidating have also appreciated when I replaced that word with “bird-lover” or “bird-enthusiast”. (For more on language, check out Birdability’s Inclusive Language Use.)
Another way to signal that you are mindful of people with print disabilities is to make sure that you use alt-text or image descriptions when posting about your event on social media. (For guidance on this, read What is this “image description” thing all about?) Remember to acknowledge that the land you’re birding would not have existed in its pristine condition if it wasn’t for the stewardship and sustainable land management of generations of Indigenous people; there’s an amazing resource from Native Land to help you find out who’s land you’re on.
If you’re taking photos of participants, make sure you have their permission before sharing them publicly.
Despite your best efforts, some things will inevitably go awry on the day of the event. A participant might get lost on the way, there could be a thunderstorm, or there might be a need to report a safety issue or harassment incident during the Big Sit. Is it clear who folks should contact (and how) if any questions arise?
If your event is longer than two hours
One of the main reasons my Big Sit was a success was because of our system of scheduling flexible shifts (in one hour intervals). It was appreciated by families who brought along kids with short attention spans, adults who could only drop by before they went to work or after they had put their children to sleep, and also by disabled birders. For example, even though I spent several cumulative hours in the circle, my chronic fatigue and social anxiety felt manageable because I was able to space out my shifts. This was also the secret to maximizing our total species count since we had almost continuous coverage during the 24 hours of our event.
Success! I used this graphic to share about our event on social media afterwords.
Having bathrooms around is always appreciated, especially if they are wheelchair accessible. In my case the trickiest part was ensuring that bathrooms could be accessed throughout the 24 hours of the Bird-a-thon. Make sure that folks know that this is an amenity that’s available, and provide explicit instructions on how to access it.
Our Big Sit started in the evening (and continued for the next 24 hours) and when I returned the next morning, the position of the sun was wildly different and the chance of someone getting sunstroke was rising by the minute. I’d made sure we were adjacent to the woods, so shade was already available nearby. Thankfully, we also had a couple of pop-up tents on standby which were hugely appreciated and folks were able to stay within the circle.
To ensure that families feel included in your initiative, consider adding bird feeders, a play area, or other way to keep kids safe and occupied. I was lucky that Mass Audubon made several family-friendly activities (such as a scavenger hunt) available during the Bird-a-thon, so it was easy enough to print out copies of the worksheets and leave them out at a station along with crayons and markers.
Receiving the Sitting Duck Award with Andrea Silva Gotay for the largest number of species identified at a stationary birding event during Mass Audubon’s Bird-a-thon, 2021. Photo courtesy of Meghadeepa Maity.
Is there a quiet place folks can get away to if they need a break from the Big Sit? No one likes to feel stuck in one chair on, say, a small overlook on a river, but pointing out woods or other quiet spaces nearby will certainly be appreciated by folks who are autistic, neurodivergent, and those who can get overwhelmed by sensory input or social interactions. We got lucky on this with the extensive network of well-marked trails at Mass Audubon’s Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary, where our circle was located.
The Big Sit I organized in May was a phenomenal success, even when measured by traditional metrics. (There’s an article about the event on Mass Audubon’s website, here.) The results reinforced my belief that equitable access to nature is not optional. Our efforts were recognized with the newly-introduced Sitting Duck award (largest number of species tallied from a stationary location in Massachusetts) and a shiny trophy! I’m certain that the deciding factor in helping us beat other Mass Audubon teams was the effort we put into welcoming birders with identities that have historically been excluded from the outdoors.
