Taza Jenkins Creates Their Own Joy with St. Augustine Bird Club

It’s a breezy Sunday in March and the St. Augustine Bird Club is meeting up at Masters Tract, a stormwater treatment facility known to locals as a birding hotspot. The group today is made up of seven young adults in their twenties and thirties, and rather than an organized chapter field trip, this outing feels more like a bunch of friends meeting up. There’s not an obvious trip leader — everyone speaks up to point out what they see, and where to go next is a group decision. Highlights of the trip include a Peregrine Falcon and a white peacock butterfly. For club founder Taza Jenkins, this casual meetup is a dream come true.

When then-28-year-old Jenkins moved back to their native St. Augustine in early 2025 after years in the Pacific Northwest, they were ready for a big change. The lifelong nature-lover was living with a chronic illness and escaping an abusive relationship in which they were rarely allowed to go outside. “I looked out the window all day, every day, watching the birds,” they say. “I knew there was a birder version of me somewhere underneath all the misery but I didn’t think I had the time for the effort I knew I would want to put into it.” They began birding in 2022 in Seattle, and found it to be a great outlet for stress.

Moving back to Florida gave Jenkins the push to pursue birding further, both as an individual hobby and as the founder of St. Augustine Bird Club. Jenkins’ initial idea was to create a welcoming, inclusive group modeled after the Feminist Bird Club (FBC) chapters they got to know in the Pacific Northwest. FBC’s mission is to “promote inclusivity in birding while fundraising and providing a safe opportunity for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, BIPOC, and women to connect with the natural world.” St. Augustine Bird Club held its first event in March 2025.

At the same time, Jenkins had also been attending St. Johns Regional Audubon meetings. Impressed with Jenkins’ initiative, SJRA president Amy Koch invited them to join the board of directors in May of that year. Hesitant at first, Jenkins accepted, realizing the position would allow them to grow as a birder and bring new resources to Bird Club.

With the rapid growth of birding as a hobby for millennials and Gen Z in recent years, St. Augustine Bird Club provides a space for this demographic to meet up and get more involved without making the commitment to a chapter, where it can be intimidating to join such an established group. Bird Club has around 30 members, and no dues, no strict responsibilities, and no expectations. All a prospective member needs to join is a desire to be in nature with others. Because of the collaborative nature of Bird Club and SJRA, members can slowly get more involved with the chapter as they feel more comfortable. Jenkins says there’s no competition between Bird Club and SJRA, but rather a collaboration. When SJRA president Amy Koch meets young people just getting started with birding, she connects them to Bird Club. “We get so much support from SJRA. It’s really encouraging,” says Jenkins. Likewise, Bird Club has helped SJRA recruit more volunteers to work on chapter projects.

For Jenkins, Bird Club has provided community when they needed it most. At the first SJRA meeting they attended, Jenkins met Liz Cernik, then a Conservation Leadership Initiative student with the chapter. The pair became inseparable after that, and Cernik is now Jenkins’ right hand when it comes to organizing Bird Club outings, along with Linda Brown, another SJRA member. In fall 2025, Hattie Odell joined the group, rounding out an initial “board of directors.” Odell now leads monthly outings like the one at Masters Tract.

A website is in Jenkins’ immediate plans, but for now, the group’s Instagram account serves as both a scrapbook and an events calendar, with flyers for upcoming events and photo carousels from past meetups shared every few days. Jenkins, an artist, designs all the flyers and created the club’s logo.

In its first year, St. Augustine Bird Club has had some exciting opportunities: in September 2025, they led bird outings as part of the Sing Out Loud music festival, in partnership with Live Wildly, a conservation nonprofit. The club also participated in the St. Augustine Pride Parade last summer and took a field trip to the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville to sketch bird specimens from the museum’s ornithology collection. Local birding events take place at least once a month, often more.

As St. Augustine Bird Club continues to grow, Jenkins has no shortage of ideas. They are looking for funding to purchase binoculars and other gear to loan to new members, and by offering a wide variety of events — from group volunteer days to movie nights — they hope to develop a wider membership base. The collaborative spirit of St. Augustine Bird Club and St. Johns Regional Audubon is a model for the future of the birding community: intergenerational, inclusive, and easy to enjoy.