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Birding may hold key to keeping your brain sharp in old age, new study suggests 76%
5/18/2026, 4:02:34 AM
BS Summary: This video contains 12 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Anecdotal, and Appeal to Authority, with Confirmation Bias as the most egregious example at 32.1% saturation with 102 hits. Analysis detected 462 faulty-reasoning hits from 318 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 68.2% and a BS Rank of 76% (4,181 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 75.10% of the video peer group.
Right on the other side of this trunk.
>> During migration season, Dr. Claude Block flocks to New York Central Park four times a week.
>> Usually on a water thrust, I've seen I've seen the pine wobbler.
>> Armed with only his binoculars.
>> Is that a red tailed hawk?
>> I think that's a cooper hawk.
>> He can spot and identify nearly any species.
>> How can you tell it's a Cooper's hawk?
>> First of all, it's smaller.
It's got a longer tail.
The 96-year-old started birding 60 years ago.
He's an active member of the New York City Bird Alliance and still a practicing radiologist.
>> My visual cortex in my brain is welldeveloped.
>> Do you think birding has helped keep you sharp?
>> Well, there's no question in my mind, but I'm prejudiced.
>> Dr. Block may be proof of an idea now being taken seriously by science.
study used MRIs to look at the brains of expert burers and found they have different neural activity and even structure.
Principal researcher Eric Wing says birding may actually reshape the brain, what's called neuroplasticity.
It could help protect from age related decline.
>> Even across adulthood, our brains remain remarkably malleable.
And as we learn new skills, you actually get reorganization of the brain circuits.
>> Other hobbies may help build neuroplasticity, too.
But Dr. Block says birding has extra benefits.
>> It makes you active physically.
>> You walk.
>> And after all these years, it still brings him joy.
>> And I say, "Oh my god, a parrot. As if I've never seen one."
That's amazing about birding.
>> You still get excited.
>> You still get excited.
>> A boost for the brain that's waiting right in the backyard.
Blackburn, CBS News, New York.
Analysis
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