Birdwatching is for everybody, but it’s not always easy. Friends of Connetquot River State Park understands that birding truly is for everybody and anybody, regardless of disability or other health concerns. Through education, outreach, and advocacy, Birdability works to ensure the birding community and the outdoors are welcoming, inclusive, safe, and accessible for everybody.
The focus is on people with mobility challenges, blindness or low vision, chronic illness, intellectual or developmental disabilities, mental illness, and those who are neurodivergent, deaf or hard of hearing, or who have other health concerns. We hope to introduce birding to people with disabilities and other health concerns who are not yet birders, so they, too, can experience the joys of birding.
We need our physical environment to be accessible, and we need our social, cultural, and institutional environments to be welcoming, safe, and inclusive for all those potential new birders. Hence, they know they are genuinely wanted, and to make sure they come back!
You don’t need a lot to start birding-just a good pair of binoculars, a desire to be outdoors, and a destination, like Connetquot!
The 5th annual Birdability Week will be held October 20-26, 2025, and we invite everyone to join us at Connetquot at 9 a.m. on Sunday, October 26th, to do a little bit of bird watching!
The hike will be on easy terrain, suitable for everyone, and we’d love to have you come out for a morning of beginning birding!
Connetquot has binoculars, along with birding checklists and booklets to borrow to help you identify the many species commonly seen in New York State!
Want more information? Contact me at www.friendsofconnetquot.org
Janet Marie Soley is the President of Friends of Connetquot River State Park Reserve, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation, conservation and history of the 3,473-acre Connetquot River State Park Preserve. They work to help State Park management protect the pristine environment, historic buildings, and artifacts, as well as support educational programs, fishing facilities and hiking and equestrian trails.
