Disability Rights Advocate Virginia Rose Believes Birding Belongs to Everyone

In our All Access issue, we're spotlighting how the disability community is making the outdoors more accessible for everyone. Explore the package here.

When Virginia Rose first started birding, she didn't see anyone else who looked like her on the trails. Having fallen off a horse at 14, Rose navigates the world as a paraplegic with a manual wheelchair. It's been 51 years since her injury and about 21 years since she began birding — a hobby she credits with giving her the space to build courage and learn more about herself.

In 2018, Rose founded an inclusive birding organization called Birdability in an effort to make birding more accessible to all people, regardless of their ability. Initially, she expected to help others and share her love of birding with a wider range of people by crowdsourcing more accessible birding locations. What she didn't anticipate was the profound impact accessible birding would have on her sense of self and community. Ahead, Rose shares how Birdability came to be, the importance of accessibility in nature, and the overwhelming beauty of birding that she wants everyone to experience. Read it all in her own words below.

About 21 years ago, I started birding. I joined the Travis Audubon birding group here in Austin, TX, and took all their classes and signed up for all their field trips. There were no other handicapped people in the chapter, so it was just me and a bunch of walking people. It never dawned on me that I could be holding people up or imposing on field-trip leaders' itineraries. I had a wonderful time, and the field-trip leaders just took me with them wherever they went. Nobody blinked an eye, nobody skipped a beat. It felt like magic because I was back outside again for one of the first times since my injury — and with a reason to be outside. But after over a decade of birding with these wonderful folks, I realized I'd never seen other disabled people on the trail. Zero. I started thinking, "Well, where are they?" And then I just jumped to the conclusion that they must not know about it. They really just must not know about birding.

When I retired in 2016 from my full-time job as an English teacher, I had more time for birding, but I really wasn't planning on starting a movement. It just happened to me — starting with a simple birdathon in 2018. There are many different types of birdathons, but in essence, you decide who's going to be on your birdathon team, and then your teammates decide where you're going to go and whether you're going to do a half-day, a 12-hour, or a 24-hour birdathon. Your goal is to see as many birds as you can in that time frame, in order to raise funds for the Audubon chapter hosting the event.

At this point, I'd been doing birdathons for 13 years with all of these walking people, and I was also leading beginning bird walks with a Travis Audubon group — none of whom were in wheelchairs. I knew where all the accessible places were because in those 13 years, I had been making notes about what places were accessible and what places weren't.

When the birdathon came around in 2018 and all of my walking friends were asking to be on my team, I decided to experiment. "No walking people are on my team. I'm going alone," I told them. The reasoning behind this decision was to prove that if I can't go birding in your park or on your trail alone, then it's not accessible. I was also trying disabuse people of the idea that, "Well, it's accessible in that someone can push you up the hill." Like, no . . . that is not accessible.

When the president of Travis Audubon heard what I was doing, he suggested that I reach out to the media and news outlets for coverage. I was reluctant, but eventually, I was convinced to call somebody she knew at the Austin American-Statesman, a daily newspaper in Austin. Then I was contacted by National Audubon in Manhattan. They wanted to send a videographer down to follow me for the entire birdathon. That was in April or May of 2018. When that video ran, that was sort of the beginning of Birdability and my advocacy work. From there, I started building the community. I made a list of the disabled support groups in town. I went to those support groups, did a presentation, and took down the names of people who had some interest in birding. Throughout the rest of 2018 and 2019, we had 25 birding walks — Birdability walks — with complete strangers. That was the beauty of it.

Birdability's initial mission was to introduce disabled people to birding. The second part of the mission was to help birding sites, parks, and outdoor areas become more accessible. It's really well-documented how important nature is for the well-being of all people, but especially disabled people because of the barriers they face in getting to nature. So the folks who are missing out the most are the ones who need it the most.

After the National Audubon video, I was invited to do my first workshop for an Audubon convention in Milwaukee. In preparation, I made a list of what I thought were the 10 most important access considerations that walking people needed to know about, including things like steps, ramps, bathrooms, and van parking. Of course, the only experience to which I can speak is my own as a paraplegic using a manual wheelchair. But I wrote down all the things that seemed critical to me in terms of access. I printed them out for the convention, and people were clamoring for the list. I mean the people in the workshop were like, "I need about 25 of these. I got to get 'em to everybody in my club." As Birdability expanded, so has the diversity of its community and so has my list. Now there's a checklist on the Birdability website with 19 different categories of access considerations — from railings and safety barriers to trail width and slope.

Another creation that I'm super proud of is the accessible birding map we created with the National Audubon Society. The idea was born out of a longtime dream of mine to get in my van and do a birding road trip all over the country. After three years, there's 1,700 pinned places in the US evaluated by local contributors who've visited those places and answered all the questions on our checklist, including info about ramp access, bathrooms, van parking, steps, length of trail, type of ground, and more.

Since creating Birdability, I've found the wherewithal and the bravery it takes to push forward a movement. And that's thanks to the community beside me. I often think back to one of my very first bird walks. There were three women in wheelchairs who didn't know each other. They'd come from different communities, so I introduced myself and we had a little binoculars lesson. I took off and was wheeling along, talking and assuming they were behind me, trying to get them on birds. Then I turned around and those women were 30 feet or so behind me, all circled up having a conversation.

They were talking about their boots. They were talking about their wheels. They were comparing their backpacks. They were comparing the gloves they were wearing. I was just like, "You guys, you're missing the birds!" And then I'm laughing, and I'm saying to myself, "This is about people, too." It was just like, "Oh my god, these people are building community right now, right this second." I hadn't really thought about that. I just thought I needed to get 'em on the birds.

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Chandler Plante is an assistant health and fitness editor for PS. Previously, she worked as an editorial assistant for People magazine and contributed to Ladygunn, Millie, and Bustle Digital Group. In her free time, she overshares on the internet, creating content about chronic illness, beauty, and disability.