More Than a Hobby: How Birdwatching Becomes Part of How We Live

Birdwatching may begin as something we do. For many of us, it eventually becomes part of how we see the world.

There is a point in becoming a birder when travelling somewhere new starts to change shape. Birdwatching begins to influence not only what we notice, but how we experience a destination.

You still think about where you will stay. You still look for the restaurants you want to try, the culture you wish to connect with, the streets you plan to wander and the places you want to immerse yourself in.

But somewhere amongst all of that, another question appears.

What birds live there?

Suddenly the trees outside the hotel become a highlight. A walk to the cool local café you just discovered takes a little longer. Green bits on your Google Map become a proper point of interest, and you start noticing random wetlands from the taxi window.

Welcome to a better life!

The birds around you become as much a part of a place as its food, architecture, landscape and culture. This isn’t about birdwatching replacing the way we travel. It simply adds another layer to it.

When something you do becomes part of how you live

For some people, birdwatching will always simply be a hobby, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Something enjoyed on weekends, on a walk, or whenever the binoculars happen to come out.

But for more and more of us, birdwatching becomes woven into the way we move through life, particularly when we travel.

That doesn’t mean birds are the reason for every trip. It’s more that once you start noticing them in everyday life, it becomes very difficult not to, and that awareness comes with you wherever you go. That is where birding begins to feel less like an activity, or hobby, and more like part of how we experience the world around us.

How birdwatching changes the way we remember a place

If you’re reading this, you may already know that James and Josh created LYFESTYLE around this exact idea: that birding can become part of how we experience a place, rather than sit separately from it.

And Bali has given us a very real example of what that means. The Bali Myna is a perfect example.

Seeing one is special in itself. But learning why this bird exists only here, how close it came to disappearing from the wild, the landscapes it depends on and the people working to protect it takes you somewhere much deeper than simply adding another species to a list.

Through developing our first LYFESTYLE Birding Retreat in Ubud, birds have led us into conversations about conservation, farming, culture, habitat and the relationship local communities have with the landscapes around them.

They have also introduced us to people. A driver knows where a particular bird appears. A farmer notices what visits the rice fields each morning. Someone points out a species they have lived alongside for years but perhaps never thought much about until you start asking questions.

And that exchange works both ways. Sometimes our fascination with a bird can help someone else look again at something that has always been around them. In return, their knowledge gives us a much richer understanding of what we are seeing.

“Birds give us another way into a place. They connect us with people, landscapes and stories we may never have discovered otherwise. That’s really what we want LYFESTYLE to be about - not travelling somewhere just to see birds, but allowing birds to become part of how we experience where we are.” -James, LYFER

The birds aren't separate from the destination. They become another way of understanding it, and this simple mindset is really powerful.

Travel is starting to reflect this too

We aren't the only ones noticing and embracing this shift. In August 2026, leading luxry travel publication Condé Nast Traveler published a feature declaring that birdwatching was "only getting more popular", highlighting destinations where exceptional birdlife sits naturally alongside beautiful accommodation, food and wider travel experiences.

What was interesting wasn't simply that birdwatching appeared in one of the world's major travel publications. It was how it was being presented. Not necessarily as a specialist pursuit requiring an entirely bird-focused itinerary, but as something that can sit alongside where we stay, what we eat, the landscapes we explore and the people we meet.

In September, travel platform GetYourGuide reported that bookings for birdwatching experiences had increased 65% year on year. 

Other recent coverage has explored younger generations discovering birding, while Broadsheet recently included LYFER in a story about the growing relationship between identity, lifestyle and niche pursuits.

The conversations are different, but they point in a similar direction. Birding is finding its place in a much wider cultural landscape.

Perhaps birding itself hasn't changed

Perhaps our understanding of who a birder is has. For many people, birding doesn’t get packed away with the binoculars. It ends up influencing where we walk, what we notice from the kitchen window, who we meet and connect with, and the landscapes we come to care about.

And now, perhaps one of the biggest shifts is the influence birding is having on the places we choose to visit, and the way we experience them once we arrive. This is not because every trip suddenly needs to become a birding trip. It’s because birds increasingly become part of the experience when we are there.

How birdwatching becomes part of the journey

There is actually a name for travelling with birds in mind: avitourism, and it's really growing too. Choosing a destination partly for its birds doesn't necessarily mean spending every waking hour chasing them.

It might mean adding a morning in a wetland to a city break. Choosing somewhere to stay because it is surrounded by a certain unusual habitat, visiting a national park because you know something extraordinary lives there. Or simply making sure the binoculars come along because, at some point, you know you are going to want them.

Increasingly, destinations are recognising the value of that curiosity too. Countries with extraordinary birdlife are using it as part of their wider tourism story, while local guides, conservation groups, lodges and communities are increasingly becoming part of the experience.

The idea is fairly simple, people travelling to see birds can bring value not only to tourism, but to the communities and landscapes those birds depend on.

What we choose to notice can matter

That is perhaps one of the more powerful sides of birding and travel, the fact that this interest has value.

A bird that attracts visitors can also draw attention to the forest, wetland, coastline or farmland it needs to survive. That attention can create opportunities for local guides, accommodation, food businesses and other locally owned experiences. Sometimes it can help make the case for protecting the habitat itself. That adds another dimension to something as seemingly simple as watching a bird.

Because where we direct our curiosity, time and money can sometimes help give that bird,  and the place it lives, greater value.

A different way of remembering a place

There is another thing birding gives us when we travel: memory.

Ask a birder about a trip and there is a good chance the birds will somehow find their way into the story. The kingfisher outside breakfast, the moment they woke up from deep slumber to be seranded by the new song of a yet to be identified bird.  These are real moments, markers of a place.

They are often not the only reason we travelled there, and not always the most important thing we experienced, but part of the texture of the trip. Maybe that is why birding fits so naturally into travel, it asks us to slow down just enough to notice what is already there.

And in a world where travel can so easily become a race between landmarks, reservations and photographs, there is something rather wonderful about bringing birding into a trip.  We dont need to let it take over the trip but simply weave into the entire sensory experience, it simply gives us another way to experience it.

Happy travelling.