LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Getting out in nature and looking for birds has long been a popular pastime, mainly for people 40 and older. But as Kerry Sheridan with member station WUSF reports, young people are increasingly taking up bird-watching.
KERRY SHERIDAN, BYLINE: About a dozen kids and some parents gather around David Schwab. He's a wildlife photographer, and he's sharing some tips for finding owls. First off, look up and around.
DAVID SCHWAB: I'll just scan kind of this area and just look for that football. You're just looking for that football in the tree that looks just a little bit different. And that's how I find a lot of owls.
SHERIDAN: They set off on a hike in the late afternoon, near a lake and some woods in Sarasota, Florida.
(LAUGHTER)
SHERIDAN: They point their binoculars skyward. High in the air above the lake, two large birds start to spar with each other.
SCHWAB: Oh, he's going after a duck or something.
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #1: Whoa.
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #2: What the...
SHERIDAN: Everyone stops in their tracks. An eagle and an osprey are fighting over something.
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #1: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #3: That's a fish.
SHERIDAN: Thirteen-year-old Sadie Veltre explains what just happened.
SADIE VELTRE: The bald eagle and the osprey were fighting over the fish, and the osprey ended up dropping the fish so the bald eagle could have it.
SHERIDAN: Everyone is wide-eyed. Schwab says that behavior is actually pretty common.
SCHWAB: An osprey will go and catch a fish, and the eagle - they are very lazy. They will - they don't want to do the fishing. They will scare the osprey to drop the fish, and then they'll take the fish from it.
SHERIDAN: Dusk begins to fall. Time to keep walking. Nature groups like this are on the rise. Mya Thompson is in charge of youth programming at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. She pulls out a U.S. Fish and Wildlife survey.
MYA THOMPSON: So it's showing me that in 2016, the percentage of the U.S. population of 16- and 17-year-olds who participated in wildlife-watching away from home was 11%, and now it's up around 30%.
SHERIDAN: Helping bird-loving kids find their people was why Jim McGinity, a science teacher in Tampa, started the Florida Young Birders Club a few years ago. He says the main difference between older birders and younger ones is how fast they learn.
JIM MCGINITY: I've been just floored by these - we're talking 12-, 13-year-olds who - they know way more than I do.
(SOUNDBITE OF LEAVES CRUNCHING UNDERFOOT)
SHERIDAN: And they're persistent. After almost two hours of searching, these kids are still walking in the woods of Sarasota, hoping to find an owl. They cross a little creek.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER FLOWING)
SHERIDAN: And then, in a clearing, a flash of brown and white wings whisks by without a sound.
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #4: Barred owl.
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #5: It was a barred owl.
SCHWAB: Barred owl. There you go. Did everyone see it fly?
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #6: No.
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #7: I got it out of the corner of my eye.
SCHWAB: So we'll just try to be quiet a little bit. The barred owl definitely flew across. We'll go this way to see if we can locate it.
SHERIDAN: There it is, high in a tree. A hush falls on the crowd as everyone looks up, and the owl looks back at us with its dark, round eyes above a tiny yellow beak.
Well, what do you think of that?
SADIE: (Whispering) It's really cool.
SHERIDAN: (Whispering) It's really cool.
After a few minutes, we see the owl's neck bulge. We hear it call to its mate.
(SOUNDBITE OF OWL HOOTING)
UNIDENTIFIED BIRD-WATCHER #8: Well, woo-hoo-hoo (ph) to you.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHWAB: Yeah, really.
SHERIDAN: This is, like, a perfect setting (ph).
SCHWAB: Who are you?
SHERIDAN: We hear another owl off in the distance. The young birders are happy. They found what they set out to see.
For NPR News, I'm Kerry Sheridan in Sarasota.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN REISCHMAN, SCOTT NYGAARD AND SHARON GILCHRIST'S "MIDNIGHT ON THE WATER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.