Sometimes when you start a hobby, you have no idea how it might change your life. That was the case for Helen King, a bird naturalist at the Sarasota Audubon Society. “I didn’t become a birder until I turned 50 years old,” she says. “I’m a retired optometrist, and an 82-year-old patient told me I needed to try birding.” In 2018, the pair tried it together. “By the end of our walk, I knew I needed to get some decent binoculars,” King says.

King, a Sarasota County native, has been working with the volunteer-run Sarasota Audubon Society for five years, leading the bird naturalist program. “We have about 200 active volunteers,” she says. She’s also involved in Sarasota Audubon Society’s Re-Wilding the Quad Parcels project, helping plant more than 1,000 new native plants across the Celery Fields’ 33 acres of property. “We’ll keep the invasive [plants] out, too, and I’ll keep leading the bird naturalist program.”

King also leads daily bird walks, helping visitors spot what are called “lifers,” or birds that enthusiasts wait their whole lives to spot. With more than 240 bird species migrating through the Celery Fields and eventually the Quad Parcels, there will be plenty of opportunities for visitors to catch a glimpse of a special bird. “There’s an app called Ebird, where people log what birds they see in different parts of the world,” she says. “The Celery Fields is the third most popular destination in the state of Florida. Do people come to Sarasota specifically for the Celery Fields? Probably not, but once they’re here, if they’re into birds, they’re coming here to see us.”

If you need any more incentive to visit, King says birding has important health effects. “You have to use your eyes, your ears, your knowledge to identify birds, plus you get to be outside,” she says.

Her favorite bird? Belted kingfisher. “It was one of my lifers,” she says. “I’ll never forget seeing him for the first time.”