JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Birds are on the move. Three to four billion of them migrate north every spring from Mexico and South America. It's a great time for people who enjoy identifying birds. Recently, reporter Nancy Eve Cohen joined a group of birders outside of Boston that includes people who are blind, and she sends us this story.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
JERRY BERRIER: That's a oriole.
NANCY EVE COHEN: Jerry Berrier points out the song of a Baltimore oriole. He's never seen one or any other bird. He's been blind since birth.
J BERRIER: If that's not a pretty sound, I've never heard one. When I hear the orioles for the first time in the spring, it's like, oh, it's so uplifting.
LEE BERRIER: That's his I-know-spring-is-here bird (laughter).
J BERRIER: Yeah (laughter).
COHEN: That's his wife, Lee Berrier, who's keeping track of the species he hears today.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
COHEN: Back when Berrier was a college student in the 1970s, his biology professor...
J BERRIER: Didn't know what to do with me during the lab portion of the course.
COHEN: So the teacher loaned him recordings of bird songs on vinyl and said his lab grade would be based on how well he could identify species in the woods.
J BERRIER: By the end of the semester, I was a birder. I was hooked, and I've been doing it ever since.
MARTHA STEELE: All right, Quinnah, let's go. Let's go.
COHEN: Martha Steele walks alongside her guide dog, a yellow lab.
STEELE: Ah, red-bellied woodpecker. That's the first time I heard that this morning.
COHEN: Steele started birding when she was in her late 30s, almost 40 years ago. She could see birds then but could not hear them. She was hearing impaired because of a medical condition, which also caused her vision to fade over time.
STEELE: I was scared, frankly, because I started losing substantial central vision.
COHEN: So she got surgically fitted with cochlear implants. They allow her to hear really well.
STEELE: Tufted titmouse. Do you hear that off to the right?
COHEN: She remembers leaving the hospital with her husband and birding partner, Bob Stymeist, and hearing birds for the first time.
STEELE: I heard these chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp sounds. Oh, my God. What's that? And he said, house sparrows?
COHEN: In that moment, she realized there was a path forward without sight.
STEELE: And that started me all over again from the beginning as a beginning birder, starting to learn bird songs by hearing. Birds keep me in the present, keep me focused on things that are much larger than me - the Earth, the universe. And it also is something that I share very deeply with my husband.
COHEN: Who's pointing out birds along the way.
BOB STYMEIST: There's a wonderful orchard oriole that's been right here in the trees.
STEELE: Oh.
STYMEIST: It hasn't been singing.
COHEN: Jerry Berrier says birding allows him to live life on his own terms.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
J BERRIER: I want to get a lot out of my life as it is because I can't change how it is, but I can change my attitude, and I can change what I focus my energy on. And birding has really just - that's been it for me.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
COHEN: And this time of year, when birds are migrating, it's inspiring.
J BERRIER: There is a huge world out there that I and other human beings know very little about and will never be able to fully experience. And it just gives me a feeling of awe, and I like that.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
COHEN: For NPR News, I'm Nancy Eve Cohen.
SUMMERS: And thanks to Elise DeLeone (ph) for recording bird songs for this story.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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