Bird~Watchers
Bird~watching, one of the fastest growing national hobbies, takes many forms. It can be a science, an art, a recreation, a sport, an environmental ethic, or a religious experience. After all, birds are the only creatures that share with the angels the attribute of feathered wings.
A bird~watcher by any other name--ornithologist, bird lover, bird bander, bird fancier, bird spotter, birder--is still someone who watches birds. I favor bird~watcher for general use because the term is inclusive. It describes almost everyone who looks at birds or studies them--from the watchers at the window who simply feed birds to the elite level of the fellows of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU), and Nobel laureats such as Konrad Lorenz and Nikko Tinbergen, who have won distinction for their work on bird behavior. As for myself I am primarily a bird artist and bird photograper, a visual person with a consuming passion for birds. To paraphrase the late E.B. White. I watch them and they undoubtedly watch me
Around 1920, when I was cutting my teeth, so to speak, on Junior Audubon leaflets, people who watched birds fell into two categories: ornithologists, who usually shot birds, and bird lovers, who did not. In Color Key to NOrth American Birds, published in 1903 Frank Chapman addressed this dichotomy: "From the scientific point of view there is but one satisfactory way to identify a bird. A specimen of it should be in hand." Then, aware of an increasing dilemma he wrote, "But we cannot place a gun in the hands of these thousands of bird lovers we are yearly developing." He used the term bird lover freely in his writing. If we insist on speaking of dog lovers and horse lovers, bird lover would be a logical usage. Dogs and horses are pets, however, almost like members of the family; wild birds are not. Loving involves reciprocation , and birds ho not reciprocate in an affectionate way. They could not care less about us, even though we feed them and call them our feathered friends.
When I am asked by the media how many birders exist I must as "Do you mean birders or bird-watchers? It depends on your definition." The term bird-watcher includes anyone who feeds birds. In my neighborhood, everyone up and down our road puts out sunflower seeds and other goodies for chickadees, nuthatches, cardinals, and finches. If I go for a midwinter holiday with my wife, Ginny, I rest assured that if the birds eat ll the birdseed, our chickadees will not perish; they will simply go to the neighbors' yards. Then there are those several million people who watch birds through a gunsight rather than binoculars, their focus, however is generally limited to ducks, quail, pheasants, and few other species.
If we include these and other peripheral categories, we could contend that there are between 20 and 40 million bird-watchers in the United States. The United States Bureau of Outdoor Recreation came up with a figure of 11 million. Robert Arbib, former editor of Americna Birds, arrived at a far more conservative estimate of the number of true birders. A birder, according to Arbib, is one who occasionally goes out looking for birds beyond the confines of the backyard. Most birders own binoculars, field guides, and scopes. Although millions of people own field guides and other bird books, Arbib puts the maximum number of bonafide birders countrywide at 150,000. Only a fraction of these would be called hard-core, but the number is growing and will continue to increase as advanced or specialized bird guides become available. Ornithologists, on the other hand, possess a high level of expertise of a scientific nature. It is presumptuous to call yourself an ornighologist simply because you identify birds or make bird lists. Most ornithologists are professionals with college degrees--either a doctorate opr at least a master's. A very few nonprofessionals who devote their time year after year to some specialized problem of avian research might be included in this category. We could make the generalization that the average person who watches birds is interested in what the bird is; an ornighologist is more interested in what it does. Most fellows and many of the elective members of the AOU look with disdain on the field-identification buffs. They contend that anyone who watches birds seriously should work on a problem of some kind. This rather lordly attitude was why the American Birding Association (ABA) was formed--as an antidote of sorts, to promote birding as a competitve game or sport. The ABA aspired to form an elite of its own that would set itself apart from the hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, who call themselves bird-watchers.
Orthos' Guide To
The Birds ARound Us
to be continued...
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