This is Bird Note.

Dwayne Vaughn's the second worked as a pilot for 11 years until he developed a rare chronic

pain condition called complex regional pain syndrome after an accident.

From that I was no longer able to fly.

Everything I had worked for came to a screeching halt.

As part of a recreational therapy program, Dwayne signed up for a birding trip, but that

day he found himself struggling with a racing heart rate.

One of the things with CRPS is the more like my heart rate goes up, the more my pain

goes up.

I was sitting there with one of the volunteers when she was like, well, you can also identify

birds, but you know, just listening to them and whatnot and I'm like, whatever, just

kind of appeasing her.

They focused on a Carolina rent.

By just sitting there and listening to the birds, it was lowering my heart rate and the

pain started going down and so all of a sudden I developed this like really intimate relationship

with the birds.

They became this healing force for me.

And Dwayne found that the birds reconnected him to his past as a pilot.

Especially at the birds of prey coming down and maybe grab something on the water and

then you get that aircraft coming in for a landing kind of position.

You know, you see the feet come out like the landing gear, the wings, you know, bend

back and you get the flaps, the wing tips come up.

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