Hey, I'm Mark Bramhill. I'm a producer here at Bird Note, and I'd like to share an episode of our newest

podcast with you. It's called Bring Birds Back, and it's about the ways we can all play

apart in protecting our feathered friends.

It's longer than Bird Note Daily, but you're used to hearing in this feed, but we think you will really

love it.

If you like what you hear, check out all the stories from this season and subscribe in your podcast app, or listen at our website,

Birdnote.org.

Thanks and enjoy the show. What have you seen of my relationship with nature this far?

Okay, so we'll go back to the beginning. You didn't like it.

Never like it.

A little over a year ago, I was not a nature person, not into hiking, not into camping, never been birding. Growing up, I was what you might call an indoor kid and my mom won't let me forget it.

If it was summer you didn't like the heat,

if it was winter, you didn't like the cold.

You definitely didn't like the bugs.

And more than anything else, you didn't like the bugs and more than anything else you didn't like squirrels.

You know what?

Still don't like squirrels.

But the COVID pandemic completely changed my relationship to nature and the outside world.

Like so many others, I went from a life of daily commutes and dinner with friends, to suddenly

getting intimately familiar with all 450 square feet of my studio apartment.

The only consolation?

A beautiful Boston Summer, a closed down road that became a retrofitted river walk and lots of time in the great

...