Birdwatchers fight to save migration habitat in DC

Hello. Hi Maria, this is Joey from Fox 5. Just wanted to let you know I'm parked down at the point. Looks like a postcard. There's a bird right that just landed underneath the plane. Where the plane just passed. There's a little dot out there in the water. So what do we stand to lose here? Look at this gorgeous space. The plan is proposed is the golf course would be expanded from water to water, losing all these pedestrian lanes where we've already seen today people are cycling, we're walking to spot birds, people are fishing. So what we stand to lose is just one of our green gems in D.C. that's available and accessible to everybody. Free and accessible to everybody. And for us, whatever day you come, that's the fun part of birdwatching. You never know who might show up. He has something in his mouth right here. Right. How does one, like, how do you get into birdwatching? There you see a bird. It's like the number one question I get. Really? Well, and I grew up in Tacoma Park just outside D.C., surrounded by trees, so it was a no-brainer. I didn't know I was birdwatching until someone put a name on it when I got older. But I think that what has happened with a lot of people is... Just the discovery of different things they can do in nature, right? And certainly bird watching is one of those things where you can discover something new every day. You can even go places. I know plenty of people who will hop in their car and they're on all these lists and alerts where something rare comes up and they go. I was just stabbing it. Oh, now he's just stabbing it. Yeah. Oh, look. These are some more gulls overhead. But I see four of them by my count. Alright, so at the DC Bird Alliance, the name Alliance would imply that since I can't interview birds, you guys are authorized to speak on behalf of birds. We have been commissioned to speak on behalf of the birds. I would think, I would guess, that they'd ask to preserve as much of this habitat as possible. And to plant more native trees, flowers, and plants. We can have our golf courses and all our areas to walk, but don't disturb them, please. And we can all be here together, right, as we have been. This is, like I said, a very important stopover, please don't disrupt their bus stop, their migratory resting station. This is like a rest stop for them. Imagine a little teeny tiny bird measured in, I would say in grams, not even ounces, and they see a green space after having flown thousands of miles, getting ready to do a couple thousand more. That's going to be, that's going to change so dramatically that some of those habitat in those pockets will be missing from here. Birds that have already kind of programmed this into their path, they'll find other places, but why? Right? I should plan a walk for Saturday. Can you do it? Yeah. Okay. We're going to have a walk on Saturday. We're going to have a bird walk on Saturday. We hope it's not the last one. I'll come too, actually. Thank you very much. We hope that the park remains open for all of these. Just since you've been here, you see all the different uses people are here for. And it will be a big loss for the residents of DC to lose this space for all the many different ways that it's used so we hope that that does not happen and we will be here on Saturday for a bird walk just to show people the joys of and there's somebody I call them people sorry y'all easily distracted by birds oh it is a bald eagle oh it's it's it's It's the swishing. Oh, wait a minute, are you sure that's an eagle? It's a gull. Not an eagle. Do you see the eagle? I said eagle. That's okay. It's a gull. We should be excited. Because the gull is excited to be a gull. So we should be excited too. It's a gull. Wow. . . We did see an eagle earlier. . I don't think Joey didn't get it on camera. . . No, I got it with my...