Jerusalem Crawley grew up in Detroit, where he didn’t have much contact with nature.
“I was a typical city kid and birds were the last thing on my mind,” said Crawley, now 22, who is visually impaired. “I didn’t know one bird from another. I thought they were all the same.”
Then when Crawley was 8, his mom sent him to Camp Tuhsmeheta (short for touch, smell, hear and taste) where he met Donna Posont, who was leading a class about birding.
Posont, who is blind, introduced him and other blind and visually impaired summer campers to the sounds of American robins, blue jays, cardinals, birds of prey and woodpeckers.
“I was immediately fascinated and wanted to learn more,” said Crawley, adding that he was surprised to learn there are more than 11,000 bird species.
Studies have shown that listening to birdsong is beneficial to mental health.
Fourteen years later, Crawley is still an avid birder with Posont’s Birding by Ear and Beyond program at the University of Michigan at Dearborn. It allows people with low vision to study birds in a 120-acre natural area surrounding the university.

Posont, who was born with a genetic eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa and is blind (she does not like to use the term visually impaired), started her monthly birding outings in 2009, with the goal of teaching blind people to explore nature independently.