The PLA Podcast

Ep 4: Mindfulness Through Birding: Finding Calm in Curiosity

• PLA • Episode 4

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In this joyful and thoughtful episode of the Physicians Leadership Academy Podcast, host Dr. Stephanie Costa is joined by Dr. Mike Prats—emergency physician, educator, and creator of the Worldwide GEL Podcast—for a conversation about mindfulness, medicine, and birding.
 
Mike shares how a neighbor's curiosity sparked a hobby that became both a personal joy and a practice of presence. Together, they explore how birding helps physicians tune in to the moment, connect with their senses, and manage stress in a demanding profession. From the parallels between differential diagnosis and bird identification to the humor of binocular etiquette, this episode is packed with insights, laughs, and actionable ways to integrate mindfulness into everyday life—no hours-long hikes required.
 
Whether you’re new to mindfulness or have a life list of warblers, this episode reminds us that stillness, joy, and wonder are often perched just outside your window.
 
 🐦 Produced by the Columbus Medical Association.
 🔗 Learn more at physiciansleadershipacademy.org

Produced by the Columbus Medical Association

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the PLA podcast, where we hope to provide an easily accessible platform that reconnects you to the PLA mindset, teachings, and community. Today, I'm super excited to have one of my friends on the PLA podcast, Dr. Mike Pratz. We're going to talk about mindfulness through birding. Mike is an associate professor and director of ultrasound research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He's also the creator and producer of the Worldwide Gel Podcast. Mike, welcome to our PLA podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. I'm very excited to get to talk to you about a topic that I'm very passionate about.

SPEAKER_01:

That's awesome. Hey, before we get started talking about mindfulness and birding, I was really, really curious about your GEL podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. Well, GEL is actually an acronym. It stands for Gathering Evidence from the Literature. And so this is a podcast about ultrasound. But it is about the research over six years ago now, and it's been really wonderful. It has a lot of purposes in my life. It helps keep me up to date on the research. Hopefully it helps some other people digest all the latest evidence and gives me a little creative outlet as well through making some graphics and producing the podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Super cool. Well, you can't see on the podcast, but Mike is set up with a big microphone and some headphones, and he's way more pro at the podcasting space than I am. But we're looking forward to our conversation today. So, Mike, tell me a little bit about how you got interested in birding.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, this is interesting. It's a weird thing that happens to you. And I don't know if it's age-related or just like the time and the place has to line up. But I'm like most people. Most of my life, I didn't notice birds. I didn't care about birds. And then it's like it just suddenly hit me. And for me, the way that it happened is that my neighbor... who is in his 70s, retired. I would describe him as a naturalist. He's always like pointing out different plants or animals around the neighborhood. And so when I saw some brightly colored birds show up on my backyard, on some trees in my backyard, I started to ask him about it. And he said, oh yeah, it's the spring migration. There's tons of birds that come through our yard. You got to check these out. And so I kind of dove into looking around up these birds and trying to figure out what these little warblers were and it turns out that it's actually a huge thing for our area in ohio we're like a hot spot for migratory birds that get trapped by the great lakes so it really piqued my curiosity and i started getting some books got some binoculars some apps on my phone and i started in the backyard just identifying calls and songs and trying to figure out what these little creatures were. And now I do it pretty frequently whenever I find the opportunity.

SPEAKER_01:

That's awesome. You know, you can see these different memes on social media and they really kind of talk about birders as being older people and, you know, that it's something that you do when you really don't have anything else to do. I love having the bird feeders in my yard. And I know I was laughing because Saturday I'm texting you because we're seeing like a tanager at the bird feeder and they're just these beautiful red and orange birds. And I was super excited. I didn't even realize that the Scioto River is one of the top migratory roots for birds in North America. And here I live- about a quarter of a mile from the Scioto River. So what an exciting time of year because migration is happening right now. Talk to me a little bit. Our last month, you don't know this, but last month our podcast was around the topic of mindfulness and meditation. We have a wonderful meditation coach in the Leadership Academy, Janice Glowski. And so she talked to us about certain types of mindfulness, but talk to me about mindfulness and birding.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I would love to. And I did listen to some of those podcasts. I thought that was really helpful and useful. And I got to say, I'm not a mindfulness expert. So let's get that out there. I like birding recreationally, and I've seen the overlap in mindfulness practices and birding. So that's kind of how I got this idea. And I didn't invent the idea that birding is good for mindfulness either. There's lots of books that people have written drawing this connection. So I guess if we start with like a pretty basic definition for mindfulness as just kind of paying attention to the present moment or engaging your body, your senses, feelings, being nonjudgmental, I think is a big part of it. If you start with that, I've found that I can do a lot of those things when I'm out looking for birds. It wasn't my intention. Like I got into birding just because I thought it was really interesting. And like I said, it kind of hit me all of a sudden. And I've noticed that it's helpful to me. I feel better after birding. And I think the way that I put that together is when you're out there listening for birds or looking for birds, you are kind of keenly focused on your senses. You're out there trying to just observe and marvel at nature. It can be very peaceful and calming. And I think that is the connection for me is that I find it as a way to be intentional about doing some of those practices and giving myself a little extra motivation to do it.

SPEAKER_01:

That's great. I read an article in ASAP, the American College of Emergency Physicians. And it was an article that you wrote. So number one, I was excited to see you having something published. But I just have to share the title of the article. And people who know me well know that I really love puns. And the article was called The Doc Side of the Loon. And I just cracked up and then, you know, I read it and you just drew some really, really beautiful observations about physicians and birding. I mean, anybody can be a birder. What makes it special when a physician is a birder? Why do physicians make good birders?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I appreciate you reading that article, and I'm glad that you liked the title. It was kind of a borderline corniness. I was like, should I really try to pull off this pun, the dockside of the loon? But I'm glad that it didn't come across as too silly, because I appreciate a good pun as well. So, yeah, when it comes to physicians, I think that we are naturally great birders, and I found this out firsthand. And There's many reasons why. I think most physicians would consider themselves scientists of sort, and as such, we kind of are curious, we like learning, and those traits in general can make it easy to dive into a hobby in which there's tons to learn and easy to find resources. But physicians are also observant, detail-oriented, used to working with differentials, and that comes in handy when you're trying to identify what bird it is in front of you. I think it's a fun challenge to notice certain characteristics about birds, comparing and contrasting them. And that's very similar to a lot of medical reasoning that we do in terms of, is it this disease or that disease? There's a lot of parallels in the way that you think, in my mind at least. The other thing that I noticed just yesterday when I was birding is that there's this additional skill of kind of sensory filtering. I don't know if there's a better word for it, but you take this cacophony of sounds and sights and you are able to hone in on what's most important or on the thing that is gonna help you make a quick decision. And it's similar when you're out there in the forest, there's like a hundred different voices and you're trying to find a specific bird or you're trying to figure out what a specific, sound is coming from. And you can use that skill as well. So I think there's a lot of ways that the skills that we've built up and the abilities that we have as physicians lends itself to the craft of birding.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So let's take this the opposite way. A physician who has a hobby of birding, how does that hobby perhaps make them a better physician?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah, that's a great point because it goes both ways. Being a physician helps you with birding and being a good birder, I think, can help you as a physician. This connection, I mean, when you go the opposite way, like you said, I think it's more so that it helps your mind. It helps you deal with a lot of the stressors of this type of job. And there's A lot of evidence that backs up mindfulness practices in terms of, I've at least looked at it in the emergency medicine literature, and I think it's also not unique to our field. I'm pretty sure there's some mindfulness articles in Residence and all sorts of specialties that say these practices can help reduce stress, burnout. have better ratings of your mood, make you feel more capable while you're working in a challenging or stressful job. So I think birding practice, it's not the type of thing where, you know, I say like, all right, I'm going to do 10 minutes of birding every day, but it's more so as an auxiliary healthy practice. Whenever I'm out, if I'm doing birding, I find that it helps me with just my overall mindset and relaxation when I'm at work.

SPEAKER_01:

That's great. Our PLA alumni, we generally get together about monthly, and I am recollecting a pretty special moment when we had an outing. It was just like a morning stillness hike. We went to Scioto Grove Metro Park down near Grove City, and I remember we were hiking along the Scioto River, and there was this area that was just so inviting. It had a lot of rocks along the side of the river, and because it was a morning You know, the sunrise was coming up and that early, you know, they call that the magic hour, that hour long time around sunrise and sunset. And the sun was just kind of coming through the trees and it was so beautiful. And everybody, like we just stopped hiking. We all sat down in this area that was so beautiful for about 15, 20 minutes and just listened. And there were waterfowl, there were other birds, and I pulled out my Merlin app. And I'm sure you have that on your phone as well. And, you know, I hit the record button and it identified 13 different birds, you know, that, that were making noise and just so quickly and things that I hadn't noticed in my own backyard. So pretty thrilling moment for me to see that kind of density of birds in one location. But do you use anything other than the Merlin app when you're trying to identify birds or is that your go-to?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, there's a lot of practices that have been associated with birding. And you can go about it any number of ways. So there's not like a wrong or right way. I think some of the old school ways would be to, while you're actually, quote, in the field watching birds, you don't try to focus as much on identification as just recording what you're seeing. And I think that kind of goes along with like a mindfulness practice of not really trying to extract too much out in the moment for another purpose so people have said like you could just sketch the bird quickly on a little pad or write down characteristics or something that will help you make the identification later i tend to do little voice memos so like as i'm watching it i'll just like say out loud okay this bird has a yellow neck or a white wing bar a short tail it's making little bobbing motions that type of thing and then later on you can go help you look stuff up and and identify it so that's one thing you could just get a piece of paper and a pencil or a pen or a little recorder i think the next step the merlin app for sure is a huge game changer and it's such a great app made by the cornell lab of ornithology and it's a free app and you can both identify based on the songs like you just click record and it will just show you the birds which is Hugely helpful. Or you can do like a step by step guide if you know like the size and the color and the place that will help you figure it out too. So that's definitely a great benefit to get when you're getting started trying to figure out the birds. And I use that very routinely.

SPEAKER_01:

That's cool. What other things could help somebody if they are hearing this podcast and they think, huh, maybe I want to start paying a little more attention to birds? Is there anything else that they should think about doing or any gear they might want to have?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think binoculars comes up a lot. You know, like you got to be careful not looking too weird when you're carrying binoculars around in public. I think there's some stigmas there that you want to avoid. But it doesn't take long. You go from being a normal person to suddenly you're just a guy walking down the street with binoculars. So I am always hyper aware of how that's being perceived by my neighbors. But binoculars comes up and you got to think about those because the birds aren't always close enough to see with your naked eye. So You don't have to get fancy. I mean, there's this whole field of optics, which is another thing that I haven't delved into too much, but I know you can get really expensive binoculars. But I've found that you can get by with almost any binoculars. So, you know, I didn't know when I got into it what those numbers really mean, because most binoculars say something like eight by forty five or ten by fifty or something and the first number is just the magnification which for birding usually want something like eight or ten times and then the second number is the diameter on the lens so really big lenses actually help you go from seeing it with your eyes to then like moving your binoculars to the right spot and finding it through the binoculars. It's much easier to do if it's a larger frame of reference. But when you get bigger diameters, then it's going to be heavier and bulkier. So you may not always want that if you're going to be out for a long hike.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's a really good point. Where's your favorite place in Columbus to go birding?

SPEAKER_02:

I would say Battelle Darby Metro Park. It's a little more out of town, but there's just so many cool birds there that are not always elsewhere. I mean, all of our Metro Park systems have tons and tons of birds. And this is another little hack. The same Cornell Lab of Ornithology helps run this website called eBird, eBird.com. I think it's.com. Maybe it's a.org. Let me see. eBird. Yeah, it's ebird.org, and this tells you hotspots in your county. So if we look up Franklin County, you can find hotspots for birding near us, and it will tell you where have the most species been seen. You can look up certain species of birds. If there's something in particular you're after, it tells you where to go. But you can see that a lot of our metro parks rank highest in the county for birding. where all these different species are being seen. And that's probably because birders go there to see birds and they're the ones that are logging them because this system is based on people reporting the birds that they see.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I definitely wrote down that website. I'll check it out. So, you know, a lot of times when people are thinking about new hobby or mindfulness in general, they think, gosh, I'd love to do that, but I just don't have the time. But I don't think you really need to carve out a couple of hours on a weekend to go birding. What are some ways that you incorporate it into your busy life?

SPEAKER_02:

This is a nice hobby to get into because it's really low startup cost, both in time and expense. Like we mentioned, you can buy some binoculars if you want, but you could even start without binoculars just walking around listening and looking for certain birds. As far as finding time, there's also a spectrum of how much you can put into it. You could just walk outside literally for a few minutes, and if you're just focusing on what songs do you hear outside your house, what birds are those, can you start to identify them? That's a form of birding right there. Or if you want, like anytime you're already going outside on a walk or maybe going for a hike or something, maybe you might want to just bring some binoculars and see if you can identify a few species. It's really whatever you want to get out of it. And for me, I definitely go on more specific birding expeditions. Like I'll have a bird I'm trying to see and I go try to find it somewhere around Columbus. Or when I'm traveling for work, like to a conference or something, I love to bring some binoculars because now you get to see birds that maybe aren't in the area that you live and you can capture some new species for your life list.

SPEAKER_01:

So do you have a checklist of birds that you're... Like your bucket list of birds that you're trying to see?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, I would say so. I mean, most... birders, once you get into it, you keep a list of the birds that you've seen so that you can tell, is this the first time I'm ever seeing this bird? And I mean, you can usually remember, I don't have like a huge long life list, but there is a certain thing when you see a bird for the first time, it's a life bird is what you call it. And that's pretty exciting if it's something that you've been trying to see for a while. So for example, I really like warblers. They're those very small songbirds. They're really, they're all over the place this time of year. And there's some that are very rare, like the Kirtland's warbler is particularly hard to find. So that would be one that I'd be very excited to see. I've never seen one before.

SPEAKER_01:

What is the bird that you were most excited to see?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, just yesterday, I saw a very rare bird. And it was called a golden winged warbler and those are also very they're kind of declining in their population so getting harder to see but I saw one when I was out yesterday and it's pretty exciting you first you hear the sound you're like could that be one of those and then you go track it down and you find it and I was like there it is sure enough very cool

SPEAKER_01:

was anyone with you to witness your excitement

SPEAKER_02:

no no one was there at all there's a lot of honor system involved in inverting you know

SPEAKER_01:

it's like the one that got away with fishing

SPEAKER_02:

exactly exactly because you have to you have to make some internal principles to decide what counts as a firm identification you know how much of it do you have to see what percent like do you need to be 100 sure or you just have to be pretty sure that was the bird you're looking for it's all just like a fun game to yourself it's pretty low stakes unless you're going to like birding competitions or trying to get you know like the most species in a year like some people do.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, that sounds a little more intense than what I'm looking for and might take it out of my realm of mindfulness at that point. But so I always joke that on the weekends, I go grocery shopping and I typically spend probably half of what I spend on our human food, I spend on bird food. That's probably an exaggeration. But I'm curious, do you have different bird feeders in your yard?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I do. Now, you always got to try to outsmart the squirrels because squirrels the squirrels and raccoons and other things. They'll always try to get your bird food, which is tricky. I'm pretty simple. So I just have like a couple on my windows, which are elevated. So squirrels can't really climb up. Just some suction cup ones with some wild bird seed. And then hummingbird one that I put out sometimes because it's so fun to see hummingbirds when they come by. They just drink some sugar water. So that's pretty easy to do. And then I have a suet holder as well, which is kind of like a cake of bird food. feed that a lot of woodpeckers seem to enjoy so that combination gets me a pretty wide array of birds visiting the feeders which is always fun

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was at an alumni session last week and Tracy Cook, who is one of our alumni, showed me a picture because she knows that I like birds. She's like, look what was at my feeder this week. And I said, is that an Oriole? Because I haven't spotted one of those. And she said, yes. And so I'm looking, trying to see what food she put out. And I said, what did you use for food? She said, nut butter. And I said, seriously? Like I just said when I was at the bird store I am not paying that much money for nut butter. And she said, you're going to pay it if you want to get the special birds to come to your feeder. So it was a good lesson learned. And I will probably buy some nut butter. But the practical side of me keeps saying, can I just do this with regular peanut butter? Do you know the answer to that question?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it should work. I mean, but also squirrels love peanut butter too, I think. So you got to just be careful where you put it. And one thing that is another thing you can try is just slices of oranges. Some birds really like that. And I, I think I remember that Orioles seem to be attracted to oranges

SPEAKER_01:

too. I have a tangerine that was getting a little old in my fridge that I put out for him. So we'll see what happens. But, um, Anyhow, Mike, this has been such a pleasure. And as I'm talking to you, I'm thinking we probably need an alumni session for birding. And if we do that, we'll have to invite you along as our expert. That would be really fun to have our group get together with you.

SPEAKER_02:

Definitely. Yeah, I would love that. One of my goals is to teach birding sometime. I don't know if that will wait till... I'm retired and a wise and old man who points out the random wildlife around or if I can do it earlier in my life.

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe there's an intersection between ultrasound and birding and you could actually take two of your passions and combine them.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, you know what? There is actually birding sonograms. And that's what you call when you look at their calls on like a spectrum of frequency. And that's what they're called. So you can actually... there is not ultrasound. I guess it's technically just regular sound, but you can see the bird's calls on a waveform and that can be helpful in understanding what you're hearing sometimes. So there is a sonogram connection between birding and ultrasound.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, well, I'm going to end this podcast before we start getting into physics because that'll just take us in a different direction. So thank you so much for your expertise, your passion around this and connecting us in a mindful way to birding, Mike.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's been a real pleasure. And thanks again for the invitation. This has been a lot of fun to talk about.

SPEAKER_01:

All right.

SPEAKER_02:

I

SPEAKER_01:

agree. Take care.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you. You too.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for tuning in to the Physicians Leadership Academy podcast. This podcast is produced by the Columbus Medical Association. We hope today's conversation has inspired and equipped you on your journey as a physician leader. For more resources and to learn about applying to the PLA, visit us at physiciansleadershipacademy.org.