A new club on Creighton University’s Omaha campus is bringing undergraduate, professional and graduate school students together to go bird watching and connect with nature. 

The club, founded by first-year graduate school student Julian Garcia, started meeting in January. Garcia, who graduated from Creighton with his bachelor’s degree in 2024, has stayed connected with the biology faculty. An associate professor, Gabriel Rivera, Ph.D., approached him about starting the club. Garcia worked in Rivera’s research lab during his time in undergrad, and it was during this time that he started to appreciate bird watching. 

“He took me birding, and that was the first time I’d ever gone out and done that. And immediately I was hooked. … A while after that, when I came back to Creighton [for grad school], he was like, ‘hey, want to start a birding club?’ and I was like, ‘yeah, that sounds awesome,’” Garcia said. “I never really thought about starting a club, but taking this new, cool hobby that I just discovered and helping others on campus get access to it — it’s just kind of awesome. It just kind of like fell into place.” 

Now Garcia is the club’s president.  

So far, the club has gathered to watch a documentary and taken a few field trips. They’ve gone bird watching at Fontenelle Forest and Burchard, Neb., as well as some additional outings.  

“My favorite bird I’ve seen so far was on a group field trip to Fontenelle Forest where we saw a rare Piliated Woodpecker,” Ruby Allen, the club’s treasurer and a College of Arts and Sciences freshman, said via email. 

Allen added, “I love the club because everyone involved likes birds, and the club welcomes anyone regardless of experience with birding or knowledge of birds in general.” 

The club is hoping to expand its activities next year. Garcia would like to go to the Sandhills, the Badlands, the Creighton University Retreat Center in Griswold or even just campus walks. 

The club uses a mobile app called eBird, which Garcia is especially interested in using in Griswold. The app tracks what birds they see, and then it uploads the information to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  

“It’s a big database that’s accessible to other scientists to predict population numbers and migration patterns. And so, it has real world implications and by doing something that is just maybe a hobby to one is citizen science to another,” Garcia said. 

He’s proud of what the club has already done and excited for the future. 

“It’s been very small-scale but … a lot for the small period of time that we have been around,” Garcia said. “Now that I have the summer to prepare for the fall, we can actually set dates for future trips. … It’s a lot of fun. We’ve made some great memories in the short time that we’ve been around, and I’m super excited for what there’s going to be next year.” 

They’d also like to engage in service projects, like adding a hummingbird feeder beside the pollinator garden on campus and putting window films on every building that is invisible to humans to prevent birds from flying into the glass.  

“[Being a birder] means to be in touch with nature and respect the home that we all share,” Garcia said. “It gives you that sense of grounding and knowing that the earth is a beautiful place and that we need to treat it kindly. … We’re not alone, as humans, and it gives you a sense of something that is bigger than self.”