Early in the morning, before the city wakes, Jane Patterson clocks in an hour or two on a slow, pause-filled walk through conservation land near her home in Ponchatoula. She waits for the sounds of birds in the area: red cardinals, house finches, prothonotary warblers. She crosses bridges made by Boy Scouts and minimally manicured trails riddled with active spiders, all in the hope of observing birds in their environment — eating, drinking, flying, hunting. Patterson, who started birding over 20 years ago, is one of an estimated 96 million people in the U.S. who engage in birding. She looks to the trees as a hobby after a career in IT, but researchers in Canada found that birding is much more than meets the eye. It could also impact brain health and cognitive decline in aging. Bird-watching is one of those skills that demands deep knowledge of species, along with their sounds and appearances. The greater the memory, the quicker the identification on the spot. Beyond obvious skills like learning to identify a house crow by its song or understand migration patterns of Louisiana’s neighborhood wildlife, it is also possible that bird-watching is rewiring brains. The bird-brain connection A study...

The rule change ends a safeguard that had been in place for 50 years and could hasten the demise of imperiled animals.