Kevin Hanzie feels kind of bad about having good news. After all, a global pandemic has killed more than 158,000 Americans and continues unabated. As a result, the country’s economy shrank by 9.5 percent from April to June, by far the worst quarter on record. Mom and pops are getting hit particularly hard: Nearly 7.5 million of the nation’s 30 million small businesses are at risk of closing permanently over the next few months, according to Main Street America. But even as the country slides further into recession, one sector—Hanzie’s sector—is doing better than ever before: backyard birding. “I say this somewhat sheepishly, but our business has been great because of the lockdowns,” says Hanzie, co-owner of Lizzie Mae’s Bird Seed, a manufacturer and distributer based in Millersburg, Ohio. He estimates that sales of Lizzie Mae’s house-mixed bird seed and various birdwatching accessories the company sources from other manufacturers have increased by about 50...