Volunteer Spotlight: Mike Ayling

By Steve Phenicie
(This is the 71st in a series on Birds Georgia volunteers, board members, and staff.)

Birds Georgia volunteer and member Mike Ayling

​Last December, Mike Ayling became the seventh recipient of Birds Georgia’s annual Scottie Johnson Spirit Award – given to outstanding volunteers – but the first who is involved with the organization’s Photographers Network.

Mike says he first got serious about bird photography when he realized that taking pictures of them would help in identifications and that he could share them with his father, a longtime birder who has been involved with a nature center in Mike’s hometown, Tulsa, Okla., for decades. “It becomes a very exciting thing and a very social thing as well, to see people, to see what they’re seeing,” he said.

“Some of the people who are in the Photographers Network are incredibly experienced and talented photographers. I just want to get a picture of a bird that I’m happy with, and I think I’m happiest with the pictures I get that are of the essence of the bird,” he said. “Every now and then, I find that I get a photograph (that says), ‘That is that bird to me.’”

The Photographers Network is made up of more than 70 volunteer photographers who contribute images that support Birds Georgia’s mission and programs. The staff draws upon them for pictures to be used on the Birds Georgia website, the Georgia Birding Trail, social media content (Instagram, Facebook, etc.), email newsletters, educational materials, and print publications and promotional materials. Photographers submit pictures they particularly like, but sometimes the staff also seeks specific images.

Mike has also been involved in Project Safe Flight, Birds Georgia’s effort to understand the issue of bird/building collisions in metro Atlanta, Brunswick, and Savannah and what can be done to mitigate the problem. Volunteers get up very early in the morning to walk a particular route to check for dead birds that have collided with buildings overnight.

Alarmed when he heard that the nation has lost billions of birds in recent years, Mike notes there are three main causes for this: loss of habitat, roaming outdoor cats, and building collisions. The first two are hard to tackle, but he noted that his children’s school, Drew Charter School in east Atlanta, which is about 10 years old, is a giant wall of reflective glass with trees all around it. After his children and others told him of dead birds, he got permission from the school and started monitoring it. After three years, he has collected 170-180 birds.

“For me, this becomes an opportunity to move the needle on awareness, both for the kids at the school and the city of Atlanta and for the parents at the school, and maybe actually have the opportunity to do something about it in a meaningful way,” he said. In the year just completed, he was able to convince the school to weave his experiences into the school’s curriculum. Ultimately, they hope to make the building more bird-friendly. 

Mike’s day job is with Newfold, a conglomerate of many posting brands that specializes in domain registration and web posting. Mike has lived his entire life in Tulsa and Atlanta except for his freshman year of college in Durango, Colo. He’s been in Atlanta since 1994 and graduated from Oglethorpe University with a major in philosophy. He and his wife, Lori, have two children, Michelle, who recently graduated from high school and plans to attend Mercer University, and Lucas, who is a rising high school junior. 

Mike is especially proud of his Victorian home in the Kirkwood neighborhood and has done extensive research on its history and that of the neighborhood, going so far as giving a lecture at the DeKalb History Center. Mike and the city of Atlanta haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on his efforts to provide a nature-friendly yard, but that’s a story perhaps best left for another day. 

---