Birding Accessibly in a Nut[hatch]

Hello and welcome to Birding Accessibly!

Learn more about Nuthatches by visiting the National Audobon website!

Birding Accessibly is inspired by Birdability, a movement to make Birding and the outdoors more accessible for everyone.

Minnesota is home to many beautiful outdoor spaces and is well known for its many parks – city, regional, and state! My aim with this blog is to help detail the various levels of accessibility within these spaces so that fellow birders and lovers of the outdoors are able to see an accessibility snapshot of the parks they’d like to venture out to.

My passion for accessibility in birding is a personal one, I am someone who has mobility challenges and can go from being able to walk fine one day, to needing a cane the next. There are a lot of others out there like myself who love being in outdoor spaces but are often unable to enjoy them to the fullest because of the accessibility challenges that some of these parks present us. Birdability’s vision states that “Birding truly is for everybody and every body, regardless of disability or other health concerns” and I resonate deeply with that vision. By learning about accessibility and the lack thereof in some of our more cherished outside spaces, you can become more informed and perhaps help to bring forth change in the future. Without further ado, let’s get to reviewing one of Minnesota’s parks!

NORMANDALE LAKE PARK – BLOOMINGTON, MN – CITY PARK

As mentioned in my opening paragraph, we’ll be going through not just state parks, but city and regional as well. I wanted to start off with a park I know well and one that I have found success in being an accessible park. It’s a gorgeous park nestled within Bloomington, not too far from Normandale Community College – Normandale Lake Park.

I have chosen to go over three of the many access considerations Birdability recommends throughout my reviews: Parking, Trail Surfaces, and Slope.

PARKING

Normandale Lake Park’s parking lot has ample space, with several large handicap spaces. These areas have cut curbs which make it easier for a person using a wheelchair or someone (like myself) who has issues with steps to get up onto the sidewalk.

There is a nice crosswalk that takes you across to the trail that loops around Normandale Lake as well. The pavement from the parking lot up to the sidewalk and over to the trail is also pretty level and large, making it easy to walk, use a wheelchair, or navigate with a white cane.

TRAIL SURFACES

The trail surfaces at Normandale Lake Park are all paved, mostly level, and all seem relatively new. I have managed to walk (with great effort) all the way around the trail a whopping one time and it stays consistent the whole way. This is important because having a solid, flat surface is much easier to walk on or use a wheelchair on then say a gravel trail filled with rocks or a dirt path that can often erode quickly and take up water within holes.

The trail is also relatively large which allows for a more comfortable time walking and birding as you may need to stop and look around for birds, or in the case of those who are vision impaired, listen for a while to identify species. Additionally, there are not too many areas that have overgrown vegetation, which can prevent individuals who use wheelchairs or those who use a white cane from navigating the trail successfully or without too much trouble.

SLOPE

For the most part, Normandale Lake Park gets an almost gold star if not for the intensity of its slopes. When entering from the parking lot and traversing left, it takes a bit of time to come across a slope of any kind (it happens shortly after the bridge pictured below). If you choose to adventure to the right initially, you are met with a downwards slope a lot quicker.

This may pose some challenges to folks that are using a manual versus powered wheelchair or those that have issues walking down a sharper slope. I have on more than one occasion had to reach out a hand to my walking companion for balance or stop walking altogether to have to steady myself (even with a cane). After the initial downwards slope the trail evens out for quite some time. The left path, although it takes a while to get to the first slope, is a harder trail to traverse in my opinion, as it slopes on more than one occasion and it is not a small slope by any means. As this is a trail that loops around the lake, you will end up running into all of the slopes eventually if you choose to do the full walk.

On a side note, although this park has some difficult slopes, there are NO stairs to be found throughout the entire walking loop and there are multiple benches to be found for resting. Even the bathrooms near the bandshell are completely accessible via a small upward slope versus a set of stairs. This is a huge win for folks where stairs are incredibly difficult (myself) or nearly if not impossible (those using a wheelchair for instance).

RATING & CONCLUSION

Overall I give Normandale Lake Park a 4 out of 5 Chickadees for accessibility:

Again, just based on those three access considerations, there are many more to look at.

I hope that this overview has helped to inform you or remind you of the challenges that are faced by a large portion of the population, not just in the indoors but also in the great outdoors. If you are interested in learning more about the movement, please check out Birdability’s website or give their Twitter or other social media a follow! If you are interested in submitting your own reviews of parks to be published, visit their Birdability map hosted on Audubon.

With that, I’d like to call back to a portion of Birdability’s vision. Remember that:

“Birding truly is for everybody and every body!”

Chickadee photo attribution: <a href=”https://depositphotos.com/category/art-objects.html”>Tit-depositphotos.com</a>
Birdability Vision and Mission photo is property of Birdability.org.
All other photos are mine, please ask before using.