Protecting Midwest Flyways and Local Habitats with the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance

Hello everyone and welcome back for another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series. Today's episode is sponsored by Destination Madison, the host of the 2026 Outdoor Writers Association of America's annual conference. During today's episode, we hope to share with you why Madison, Wisconsin, and the surrounding communities in Dane County are the perfect destination for family vacations, couples getaways, outdoor adventures, meetings, conferences, and conventions. Our guest today is Matt Reach. He is the executive director of the Southern Wisconsin Burning Alliance. Matt, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Thanks, Howard. I'm really excited to be here. Fantastic. Now, first off, I have to just acknowledge you with my official podcast Burning Cup. So cheers to you. Beautiful Northern Cardinal. Yeah, excellent. I have to say, so I live in in Nevada. Actually, I I should technically say I live in Boulder City, which is official as of last week. But home of the Hoover Dam. I have to say that when you're a resident of Boulder City. I moved from the Midwest, and the one thing I miss the most is the Northern Cardinal. And especially when the weather is just starting to change. It's cold outside. It's summer or springtime, it's right around the corner, and then the cardinal starts to chirp away. And I that is like the I think that's the sound I missed the most from when I made that move. But so I'm I was excited to have that mug. Oh, you picked a good one. Northern Cardinals are amazing. They look they're basically a tropical looking bird that lives in North America. If you take them, if you look at a cardinal with fresh eyes, with that that bright plumage and the crest, it's it's basically a tropical bird. And there's a reason why it's the state bird of seven states. That is it's amazing. And it's just and I'm excited when I get to Madison later on this summer, is just to get out into a nice park and just as a friend of mine, Bridget, would describe as slow birding, just sit there, relax, have a beverage, and just listen to the birds. I I just love looking forward to that. So, first off, Matt, let's talk about the uh the the Southern uh Wisconsin Bird Alliance. How long has the uh this organization uh been around? And as an executive director, how are you shepherding them through really some interesting times around conservation and uh and and why it's so important, especially in a in an area like the southern Wisconsin and the Madison area? Well, I uh so we're we started out as the Madison Bird Club in the 1930s, 1935, and uh really just sort of a uh just a group of people enjoyed getting together and going birding and um thinking about bird issues. And we've evolved into uh uh our own 501c3, a nonprofit organization. We were we were called the Madison Audubon for some time until we changed our name um recently. And so we are now uh we're a chapter of the National Audubon, but we are our own separate organization that has grown into one of the regional leaders in um bird conservation through advocacy, education, and land protection. And um so I I feel like I've I've hit the jackpot in in terms of a job because I get to work on what I think is really important, but also really share the joys of birds. We conservation is a really important, uh serious business, but we also say we're in the joy business because protecting and celebrating birds means really great things for our communities and the environment. And so it's a privilege for me to be able to work on their conservation. And the wonderful thing about birds too is that if you protect birds, if you take care of uh problems with birds, you're taking care of a lot of conservation issues and environmental issues. So, and that's really how we approach our work. There are through there are threats to birds that have existed for a long time. We've lost three billion birds since the 1970s, which is is is unbelievable. Yeah, and there's bird declines, uh significant bird declines in lots of different groups, including common species like red-winged blackbirds that have declined significantly, even though there's there's a lot of them, they're they're really on the deep decline. So our our goal is to share the joys and um the importance of birds and nature with everyone, um, because nature needs everybody. We need everybody to understand that these that birds really matter, that the fate of birds is really tied to our own. So, well, for protecting birds, we're we're doing a great job of taking care of ourselves too. Okay. The programming that takes place in southern Wisconsin, that's the education, the conservancy, and just again, spreading that joy. How are the the folks who are interested, or maybe they're newly interested, maybe they saw a movie or they saw that's a cool bird, I want to learn more about it, and now they're off and running. Uh, what are some of the programs that uh this organization has that is not only promoting the conservation but also the education and just the pure joy of it all? Yeah, I mean, first of all, birds are birds and birding and being outside, that's for everybody. And it is it is not just for the the elite birders with their high-end gear who are spending hours out in the field. It's for everybody. Every single person can enjoy birds and you can do it in your own way. You can get really serious about it if you want and learn how to identify all the plumage variations of all the warblers and the the sandpipers that skittle along the mud flats, or you can just walk out your door and look up and enjoy what a what a cardinal is doing in a tree and listen to its its songs. And there's lots of ways that people can get involved in in that. So it for us, it's really important to really bring that sort of education side of it, but also opportunities. So we have tons of field trips that are available to the public that are free. Uh you can come on out, and there are various levels, abilities, access. So we we want everybody to be involved in in this in ways that they feel comfortable in. There's also really uh lovely um excuse me, apps and things that can really have evolved over the years that really open up birding to people. I recommend highly iNaturalist and seek, and especially Merlin. Merlin is a great app for I mean, it identifies stuff for you. So you just click it open and hit hit the record button, and it's telling you everything that's singing around you, which is just mind-blowing. It's incredible. So yeah, you and I you mentioned slow birding, that's a one uh fabulous way to bird. You just sit there, enjoy life, joy enjoy the the sounds around you, and that's also another way to enjoy birding too. So we do education in both kind of informal and formal ways. We have like I mentioned, a bunch of different events. We have uh a very active citizen science program. They uh community outreach program for different uh projects like bald monitoring bald eagles and um and American Kestrel Ness and Bird Collisions, even. But uh we also do formal education through classes, adult education classes, and on how to bird and uh how to enjoy how to mix art with nature. Howard, I'm just about to get a train that's going right by. So we'll talk about it. When I lived in Chicago, I was on right and I'm on Michigan Avenue, and my bike would literally pick up everything. And I always described it as a feature when the ambulance went down. But I can't hear it, by the way. Oh no? That's okay. Yeah, and that's one thing about birding too, is you can use both your the sight and sound. Here's my train. I'm gonna mute for a second. It's quite loud. Okay. Okay, well, we'll hear it a little bit here as it fades away. No worries. We we should have notified the uh BNSF or Amtrak or whoever's going by. Hey, look, guys, we're doing a podcast. Can you like slow down a little bit? That's right. Well, which actually begs the question, where you're in are you is your office in Madison? Yeah, our office is in Madison. It's uh uh sort of our um central hub, but we we work throughout southern Wisconsin. We have our citizen science program reaches uh I think it's 38 counties in southern Wisconsin and into the Fox Valley, where uh our baldie our excuse me, our kestrel program is all throughout southern Wisconsin. We run field trips throughout southern Wisconsin. We also have four wildlife sanctuaries in four counties here that are that are represent 3,000 acres of protected and restored habitat. So and I just remembered that my train of thought nope, nope unattended with interrupted by the train. Uh I was mentioning our formal education. So I'm mentioning adult education classes and and uh we do speaker series and things like that. But I also want to emphasize that we have a very rigorous uh youth education program that works with schools and community centers in the Madison area that brings really high-level teacher-tested, kid-tested um outdoor education to young people, particularly uh middle school and elementary school kids. And uh we visit the same kids, it's free to these these community centers and schools that we work with. And it and it's repetitive. We go back to the same kids, same classrooms. Um we provide curriculum over maybe 12 weeks. And so the kids get a chance to we'll get a chance to learn their styles, what they like, and give them an opportunity to build trust. And um, so it's really exciting to see their the relationships blossom with the kids and then them to get really excited about about nature. I love that. I was reading Trish O'Kane's book, and Trish was a guest on the podcast earlier the spring. Her book was Burning to Change the World. And as they were working very closely with Warner Park, uh, which is I guess it was an economically, one of the economically uh depressed areas at the time, but all this change that was going on and this idea of uh getting kids involved, the local schools, and having them go out with the students and just developing those relationships and learning about nature and being out there. And it was cool to to uh read about certain kids. I mean, every kid's different, and there's there's also certain developmental disabilities, social functions that are maybe uh everybody's a little different, but everybody latches on something that's special. Like I'm a I love I love raptors, I especially love owls. And by the way, I've al I've only seen an owl in captivity. I've never seen an owl out in nature. How Howard, we gotta fix that. We gotta fix that. Uh I'm I I just I was thinking about it the other day as I was preparing for doing some uh pre-podcast planning, and like I have got to see an owl. I can get well if you come to Madison, we can find you an owl. We've got we've got a really healthy population of great horns and barred owls and screech owls, and we even get eruptions of snowy owls in here, but you won't be here at the right time that they're they're uh a winter bird. So yeah, we're and we have yeah, we've got uh yeah, it's a great great owl population is here. So hopefully we can we can get you an owl live owl. I love it. I love it. Yeah, and you mentioned kids, by the way. I just want to just really quickly say that um, you know, the re youth education, nature education is really important for kids. And I'm gonna I'm gonna make myself sound old, but kids these days, uh, they just don't go outside like they used to. When I was a kid, I got kicked out of the house and then whistled home for dinner when we'd be we'd be coming back dirty and bugs we collected and whatnot. And and uh the it's a different age now, so electronics are really uh keeping kids inside. So it's really important to get kids outside, not only because uh for a variety of reasons, they really benefit from it. There's there's all sorts of stu research studies that show that it it's tied to emotional health, mental well-being, physical health, academic performance, all sorts of positive things about being outside and enjoying nature. And the other thing is that you and I are older, and though there's a lot of folks in our age that care about nature, but we really need the younger generations to care about nature if the work we're doing now is to continue on. So nature needs young people. So I I I think you are spot on, and just the idea of walking away from the computer. I don't I've never done video games in my life, but but I know it like that. It's just but just to get outside and just walk, put your feet on the ground or listen or smell, look, and just kind of it just it it trains the senses to appreciate what's around. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's really lovely for us to see sort of that really awaken in a young person when they're initially really they don't want to touch anything. They want they want to be outside in the first few lessons that we do, and later on they're the first ones out the door and they're they're diving in and they want to experience everything, which is it's really gratifying to know you've opened up that world to somebody. Sure. Well, I'm curious, and it's kind of in our the podcast, I have uh segments called the aha moment, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. But the segment is about when you realize what you were doing as a job, a vocation, a hobby really meant something to you, why it was so important. And I'm so I'm curious, uh right now, off the cuff, when when you've hit you or maybe one of your volunteers have gone out and they're working with a group of kids, and so you've interacted with them and they're they're they're all of a sudden they're they've changed. They're wide-eyed, they're smiling, they're excited. What was it like when you first saw that type of reaction to this activity of just learning more about the birds around them? Well, I mean, I gosh, I mean, it makes your heart sing, sing like a bird, I guess, or I'll use a number of metaphors. It makes it fly. Yeah, I mean, we it there, I mean, there's been a couple of uh really interesting, I mean, this happens all the time, but I I our educators who are incredible. We have two educators here that are just incredible. They're so good at working with kids, they're so inspiring, they're really good at working with teachers and coming up with creative and very good lessons. And and really learning from the kids too, about what what resonates with them. But we hear these stories about kids who are they're and particularly our our under our uh our education program um serves um underserved or underrepresented our uh communities. So they're the school and community centers are are at least 50% kids of color or um low income. So these are kids who can who don't have access to this kind of nature education usually. So it's just amazing to see both the images and the stories of kids that are initially really, really reluctant to participate in and in nature or in nature education that are transformed in the end and they're they want to touch everything. And we had a a kid who didn't want to be involved in anything, and then later on is like he wanted to take all of his owl pellets home. And we're like, I don't know if you want to, we would have let that happen because there's a bunch of mice bones and things in there. So I don't think the parents would be super excited about that. But it was great to see the transformation. Yeah, it was great to see the transformation and see the kids. We love these uh we love what the educators call um oo moments where they're like grossed out so with touching something, and then later on you see them do it getting engaged in it. And all of our adolescents are safe, they're all they're all we're they're super safe for kids. They're all they're all tested. And um, but we just love that transformation. And you can see it in the photos too, these sort of uh just changes in the kids. And uh we also really want to show them that you don't have to go to a national park to enjoy nature, you just gotta go outside, you gotta walk out the door, and nature's right there. It's there in your it's there right outside their school, it's right there, and they oftentimes just haven't seen it. That hasn't that world hasn't been open to them. So you can enjoy nature in in places where they feel safe, and it's all and nature's all around them. I love that. And Madison, I've had the pleasure of visiting Madison a couple of times, and it and I have to admit, I never knew it was situated on an isthmuth. I mean, I just all I saw was land. I never knew there was the lakes around, but you've got inland parks, you've got the waterfowl, you've got the the birds that hang out on the water, and then the in the and the the reeds that are on the water. So different different times types of animals, different types of birds, and and like you say, you walk outside the door like this morning. I was sitting outside with my cup of coffee, and you mentioned the Merlin app. I'm always listening with the Merlin app. Okay, who's around? And it's usually it's the big three the dove, the mocking bird, and there's um a junk, I think it's a junko is around uh right now, or no, a verdant. A verdant is around. And I just love listening to them, and you can do that right outside your door. I love that. Yeah, and I I love that. I mean, it's a good example of of we really want to break down barriers to to access to this kind of stuff. We there's this again, there's that stereotype that birding is for is for birders and people who are spending all their time doing it. And Merlin, Merlin's a great app because it breaks down that barrier of like, oh, I can't possibly learn a song. Well, you don't have to. You don't have to learn the songs, you can just listen and enjoy them. But if you want to learn one or two or three or more, the the those kinds of things really open that up to you, and you can you can really like oh that's what a cardinal sounds like, okay? And it's it's like a laser, sounds like a laser, a whistling laser. Um and yeah, so and our and that's what our our uh classes are designed to do and our field trips are designed to do, is really just make things accessible. Excellent, excellent. Listen, I I was hoping uh you would uh treat us to a little tour of your website if that's okay. Of course. Just so we can learn a little bit more about what's what's available, talk about some membership and engaging and uh how the visitors can engage into the great programming. Now, hopefully uh this is gonna work. It's the miracle of technology. All right. Now we should be seeing your website. Ah, yeah, there it is. All right. So that right there, by the way, for those folks who don't know, uh the first screen back there was the bobbling. And it is a declining grassland bird. It's so beautiful. If you can pop back there, it looks like it's wearing a reverse tuxedo and has a I will call it a toupee, a yellow yellow toupee. But it is this is a declining grassland bird. It's gorgeous and um really it really needs protection because it's lost most of its habitat over the last few decades. But so we were work actively working on habitat restoration for that bird. Okay. So let's go on a tour. So what else? Oh, look at that. So where should we go? Well, there's a lot here, I'll tell you that. And you can explore here for for a long time. That the about tab tells us, it tells you a little bit about what our work is and and what we do, our mission statement, our who we are tab tells you about our staff and board. We we're we're now, I think we have 14 staff folks. Yeah, you can re access our Birdner Nature blog. You can and all of our newsletters and reports are on there. So Bird Nature blog is written by guests, um, members, um, board members, staff, um, and it highlights different conservation issues, but also we talk about uh bird individual birds. We have a Friday feathered feature. So you can go and learn about specific birds and interesting facts about them. Talk about important roosting sites for chimney swifts and and migration and all sorts of natural phenomena. So there's there's a lot to wade through there, but you can pretty much find whatever you're looking for, uh, any kind of topic you're looking for. So the uh with the outdoor writers association, I mean you can't miss it. There are a lot of writers, photographers, podcasters. So I imagine uh many of us uh there's there's quite a few writers who are very very much into the birding as well. So I imagine you'll get uh uh a little bit of a lift, hopefully, from some of our members that when they come into uh Madison for the conference and their experience going on the excursions. I love that. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. So let's go back. I saw something here. You can see we got three newsletters and reports, or financial reports are online, or newsletters are all online, so you can access all of those, and they're really well done. We have a wonderful director of communication who puts these together and they're um they're fantastic. I mean if you want to read our strategic plan, it's on there too. We're open, we're an open book. So we are also very committed to improving um diversity, equity, inclusion, and access to our work so we you can learn about how we're do how we're doing that and who we partner with. We have a wonderful uh partnership with uh the Wisconsin Um Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired, and we do a birding class with them. So we so these are folks who have different vision abilities, some and so that's a really eye-opening thing. So trying to make nature accessible and um to all people. Sure, sure. And then there's you want to learn about birds, we got a whole bunch of different kinds of things here. How you can how you can attract birds, where you can go birding. Uh there's our Friday feathered features. We we get a lot of calls about uh yeah, so this is all these are all typical usually written by staff, but um you can learn about different birds and um like Sora and Fields Barrow, Bronze Rasher, and uh some of the fun facts about them. So and um and any interesting stories about them. We we cover everything. Oh wow, very nice. All the birds of Wisconsin are in here. So there's a lot of variety just looking at these these photos, there's a huge variety. It's amazing. Oh, there's the owl. Yeah. All right, that's the owl I'm gonna see. Okay, I love that. Nice thing about Madison is there's a lot of burgers, so you can get a good sense of where where people are seeing different things, like owls. Okay. Our land tab is pro is uh this is this is a unique part of what we do as a bird conservation organization. We do all the kinds of things a bird conservation organization does, like the field trips and speaker series and things. But we are we decided uh we decided years ago in the late 1960s to invest in um in land protection. And so we're we uh we have 3,000 acres or so of Bolivia that we uh in four major wildlife sanctuaries, Fair Meadows, Favel Grove, Goose Pond, and Hillside Prairie, that we are actively managing for wildlife habitat. And they're open, available for people to visit and enjoy and take in nature. They're full of beautifully restored native habitats like prairie and oak savanna and wetlands. And you can learn all about our our work on these. And we're really proud of this work. It's a it's a big investment for us because we don't just buy land and leave it, we buy it and we actively work all year long to protect it. So the Hillside Prairie is our newest sanctuary, it's got a beautiful um history, uh and it's got it's just a gorgeous place to to go. This is where we have most of our bobble links, um, that grassland species, because they really like this place. So yeah, so I yeah, I encourage folks to and these plates are you please come, you can visit them, and we've got maps and how to get there and how and I would imagine this is the activities that my my peers at the OWAA are gonna be interested in. And whatever right now the pro the exact nature of the programming is kind of hidden from view, and uh the officers who are planning the event then work coordinating with uh destination Madison. There are they probably know more than you and I do. But uh I just think there's gonna be a lot of opportunity, not only for the the writers, the photographers, the the the artists, just to get out there and explore and just uh listen, learn, and uh create, which is gonna be a lot of fun. So we've got education. Yeah, this is um this is mostly focuses on our youth education program and what we do. Also, for anybody out there who is an educator, we provide all of our lessons online for everybody for free. So if you and for even if you're just looking for an activity with your grandkid, we've got stuff on there that you can do to like a scavenger hunt, for example. So uh but this highlights our classroom partnerships and community center partnerships and how we're getting kids outside and having those kind of aha and you moments, I guess. Yeah. So I love it. Okay. Yeah, let's go back. What else we got? We've got engaged. This is getting involved. Okay. Yeah, lots of ways to get involved, whether it's through advocacy or community science programs. We yeah, we put our volunteer forum on here if you're interested. We have a cool podcast that's uh that's it's called QuAC. It's questions act by it's questions asked by curious kids. We get all sorts of great questions from kids, like how does a how does a bird breathe in an egg? And so Mackenzie, one of our educators, collects all these questions and then she brings in an expert, and then they do a podcast about all these great kid questions. Oh, very nice. Very nice. See, this this is truly putting the outdoors in into the podcast. And I I I I kid about it sometimes because my my podcast, it's me sitting in front of the computer, and my goal is to get the outdoors in the outdoor adventure series. But you you all are doing it right here with these uh these great little episodes. Excellent. So volunteer that accessible. Yeah, that's our we have a wheel, we have a altering wheelchair that folks can check out. Oh, really? We yeah, we've got a grant so that we can folks who have limited abilities can uh basically check it out for free. Use it on their own, or we bring it to an event and you can use it at that point too. Oh, very nice. I love it. I've got the membership page. I did see merch, by the way. I gotta I always gotta talk about merch. Yeah. And yeah, we have t-shirts and and uh and patches and hats and things like that. The typical fair. Yes. Excellent. Okay. And there's also a we ski we there was also a page there called Issues right in the center there that just highlights some of the really important issues that are happening in the area. Uh we're working on a there's a chimney swift roost. Chimney Swifts are an amazing bird. They spend 90% of their life on the wing and they roost in chimneys, and they used to they were there, we've capped a lot of the chimneys. So they're the these roosting sites that exist are are still really important. And there's a really awesome one at my son's former middle school, Cherokee Heights, and the building is slated for destruction because of uh because it needs to be, it need it needs upgrades, and they're building a new school, but the city of Madison is working with us to build a new chimney, which is wonderful, so we can protect this incredible species. So you can learn about various issues in the in the our our neck of the woods, which is okay that we're posting. Actually, it begs a a question and you've kind of just alluded to it, is the your organization's interaction not only with the state in their conservation uh stewardship initiatives, but also the city itself. Uh it sounds like you all are working very closely across many venues to not only protect, but to offer solutions like this this building needed to be uh demolished because it wasn't safe, but we still needed to align ourselves with helping to protect and nurture the stewardship of this species. Yeah, we're big fans of partnering. We realize that we we can't do it. We we all working together, we lift all boats. So we we really think we can increase our impact and do more when we work together. So we love working with this with partners like the city and the University of Wisconsin and State DMR and other nonprofits. So uh yeah, we're always we're always looking for partner. Excellent. Excellent. Very good. Uh we you can also stay in the loop regarding the projects. I love that. Yeah, a lot of act actions to be able to stay involved all throughout your website, which I really like. It's not like there's just one page if you have a question. I love the fact that you've done that. Lots of ways to do that. And folks can opt in, opt out, we're never gonna we're not gonna spam you. Excellent, excellent. Well, listen, thank you for taking us on a uh this brief tour. I'm gonna go back and to our main page. And I am curious, so we're gonna have two or three hundred members and and spouses and partners coming in uh to Madison for the conference later on in August. If not knowing what's gonna happen, but what if folks are gonna want to take advantage of all the outdoor activities, especially as it involves birding, is there how would you suggest they kind of dip their toe in to help them prepare, which is why we're doing this episode, so we can share with our members when you get to Madison, you get a lot of birding activities. What would be the ways to to kind of kick off that type of planning and activity for our members as they come in? Well, I think that I mean, you there are lots of places where you can check out events that are happening that are already scheduled. There are a number of different organizations around Madison that offer birding trips. You can check out our website, for example, but Madison Parks has trips, the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin has trips, Feminist Birding Club. There's a number of organizations, and some of these are you can find them all on just like regular calendar pages, like the there's a paper here called the Isthmus, and the Isthmus puts out a nice calendar of events. There's lots of things to check to check out there. Um you can also kind of do your homework on pace places to go that are right in the Madison area. Madison is pretty spectacular. You mentioned earlier the lakes, because we have it's uh it's a it's known as the Four Lakes region, and there's we've got Four Lakes right near Madison. Actually, there's more, lots of wetlands, and so it's a really great place for birding. And there's also a lot of natural areas, both within and nearby Madison. It's really spectacular. So we get a wonderful migration season, we had a wonderful breeding season. So there's lots of places that you can go that are really, really close to even just downtown Madison, but short trip outside of Madison or or even within Madison, you're and you're in a wonderful natural area where you're gonna see birds and taking some fresh air. So yeah, just I would you can look around on something you some folks could look around in is something called eBird. You have to have an account for it, but it's a great place to go and see where people are seeing birds. People submit their own checklist. So if you look at Madison and uh just scroll into the map, you can see all the places where the hot spots where people are going to bird and what they're finding there. Like if they and for example, if they're seeing a great horn owl in the middle of the day that you can go check. Right. I'll be leaving the conference for that one. Okay, I'll be right back. Excellent. Listen, before we head out, I've kind of alluded to the aha moment, and I want to also give you an opportunity. Is there anything else that you'd like to share about not only the impact it's had on you, but also when you see the impact on others who especially those young kids and perhaps the adults or the folks that do have uh are have a visual or a physical impairment when all of a sudden this whole world of burning is now open their eyes and ears and senses to something brand new. What's what's it like for you when you you kind of hear about this or experience it firsthand when you're out there getting really with kids? Well, I I I joke around and say that I have the the third best job ever. And the first two being uh either Frank Sinatra Krooner or an NBA basketball player. Neither one of those was possible for me. So uh I got the third best because I I just get to experience I feel like we can make a difference, but also really bring joy to people. And so I I've seen these kind of really wonderful aha moments throughout our membership and and for di people of different ages where they're just I don't know to see somebody friends of mine or or folks that we work with, and they say, I just started noticing that there were birds in my backyard, and there's a lot of them. But yeah, yeah, there's a there are quite a lot. So I get I get texted a lot by friends who are like, I've got a red star in my backyard, and they're really excited. And these are people that have never thought about birding before. So it's just so joyful for me to see folks really get that. And especially with young people, when um when they when a world just got completely open to them that they kind of shunned previously, that's that you that they were shown that it's not scary, it's not bad, it's really great. And uh that to me is just the the thing that really fills my bucket to see not only kids but but um but everybody just sort of just just kind of see this world open up. And um, I really love that. And the the thing to me is that it's satisfying because birds really matter. This isn't just like a it's not just uh protecting birds for the sake of our own joy, that is true, but they really matter. I mean, they they they're drivers of the economy, it's a huge industry. So we we need birds for the economy, they're providing ecosystem services like pollination and seed and uh pest control and nutrient cycling that they're doing for free for us, and we can't replicate them if they're gone. And they are offering us all this significant mental and physical benefit, and sure, they're singing for us, which is they're singing for themselves, but but I I like to think of their singing for us too. I you know something when I hear that, when I hear them singing out here, or if I was back in the Midwest that target, I know they're doing me a great service. So I I truly uh appreciate that each and every day. Listen, what kind of insight do you have that you would like to share with our listeners? Call it insight to go. And it could be a a book, a quote, just a philosophy, uh, but something that you'd like to leave with our listeners. Well, I want to emphasize again that birds are for everybody, they're for everyone. It's it's not just a select group of birders or twitchers or whatever you want to call them. There's no experience needed. It's a great activity. You can do it just right outside your your your door. So I just encourage people to just go just look up, listen and look up. And uh so you can see birds, but you can also listen, and that's really wonderful. And there's wonderful times to, particularly spring, to listen for birds. The right now the Baltimore Orioles are singing like crazy, which is one of them. Yeah, I've never seen one of those either. I I've seen pictures of friends in their community that have the Baltimore Orioles and they have the half of an orange out there on the sink. I like now that is cool. I want to see that. They're voracious too. Yeah, those frugivores, they eat like crazy. So and then you can do things like slow birding, like you mentioned. So there's easy ways for people to get involved. You can it's not there hopefully there aren't the same barriers that there were before. And folks can also, there's lots of ways that folks can help birds too. I mean, we there's we have a program called Lights Out Wisconsin where we're encouraging folks to turn off lights at night when turn off yeah, lights at night when birds are are moving, especially during migration, because it can cause confusion and window strikes. You can even prevent window strikes at your own house. There's lots of solutions if you're getting birds not that are hitting your window. There's a whole bunch of things you can look at. I would encourage you to go to American Bird Conservancy's website for that, because they're they have all sorts of solutions there. You can feed birds, you can plant natives in your yard. Natives plants are more hardy, they're beautiful, and they provok they they support birds and other wildlife. I always always tell people to keep their cats inside. Cats are a big killer of birds. Right. Yeah. And yeah, so there's lots of small things that people can do that make a really big difference collectively to to to uh keep our our bird populations healthy. Very good. Well, man, it has been a pleasure to have you on the podcast and really appreciate you uh taking the time to join us today on the outdoor adventure series. We look forward to hopefully meeting you in person. And if not, you or one of your associates going out on a little excursion to do some uh do some birding, go see that owl. So heck yeah. It's anytime I can get away from my computer to go see birds, I'll welcome that opportunity. I love it. I love it. Listen, we're gonna provide a backlink uh to the website, swbirds.org, up on our show notes. I know you've got a great uh Facebook and Instagram page. We'll have backlinks uh to it as well. Again, thank you for spending time with us today. My pleasure. Thanks, Howard. It was great. All right, listen, Matt, stay in the line. We're gonna do a quick close and you and I can have a final chat. Okay, sounds good. All right, folks, we have just been chatting with Matt Reitz. He is the executive director of the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. What a great episode, and it's getting me excited, not only to uh get ready for uh the OWAA's annual conference uh in Madison later on this summer, but also just excited about getting out there and doing some birding and just uh what a we took a nice tour of the website, learned a lot about the programming and and experiences that are available and ways that you can uh uh also support uh the activities of this great organization. Now, do remember we're gonna have uh in the in our show notes the links to the website, Facebook, and Instagram pages. As for us, you can find our episode on our website, outdooradventureseries.com or on Facebook and on LinkedIn on our outdoor adventure series pages. The video of this episode will be up on our YouTube channel, which will include the tour of the uh website. Now, just also we want to give a great shout out and thank Destination Madison for sponsoring uh this episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series. Thanks to their support. We can introduce you to guests like Matt. Now, to begin planning your Madison getaway or outing, visit Destination Madison at visitmadison.com. Until next time, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, go out there and have a fantastic day. Take care now.