Birder?

I'm pretty sure I'm not a true birder. I can understand how a casual observer might mistake me for one, so I'd like to set the record straight. I do know a lot about birds. I can reliably identify the common birds by sight and song. I know the difference between a house sparrow and a tree sparrow. I am good at spotting birds in the woods. I recognize most hawks and owls by their profile in flight. I own more than a dozen bird books and guides.

Even so, my interest and knowledge pales compared to a true birder.

I'm pretty sure all birdwatching starts with a backyard bird feeder. We have half a dozen. Merry makes regular trips to Wildbirds Unlimited to keep them filled. We both greatly enjoy the close range bird watching our feeders provide. I've been interested in bird behavior for a long time now. Way back when I was twelve years old I earned a Boy Scout bird identification merit badge. As I recall, I needed to identify 50 birds by sight and sound to earn it. Now, nearly 50 years later, I know a lot more birds.

Even so, I'm not in the same league with true birders.

True birders have a depth of knowledge and interest I admire, but do not aspire to match. Nor do I own or feel the need to use any optics in my bird observations. True birders go out in the field with at least one good pair of binoculars, a spotting scope with tripod, and a camera with a powerful zoom lens.

It's generally not possible to identify birders by their plumage. When not dressed for the field they blend into the ordinary mass of humanity. Only when the topic of conversation turns to birds do their true colors emerge. For example, last Friday we were having dinner with friends in Saranac Lake, two of whom, Cris and Ron, we just met. The conversation drifted to birds commonly seen in the Adirondacks in winter. Ron remarked that it is generally easier to see and hear owls in the winter. He said he heard one just last night, then imitated the call,

Wo … Wo … Wo … Wo.

His careful timing, intonation, and volume led Merry to opine he had likely heard a Saw-whet Owl, a small bird often heard but seldom seen. Ron and his wife Cris agreed that was probably the bird. There followed an increasingly detailed discussion of owl calls. We learned that Ron has recordings of owl calls and uses them to attract owls into view. He told us that all birds have a wide repertory of calls, not just the most common ones people tend to recognize. He told us about sitting around a campfire a previous summer night when his family was startled by a loud call of what had to be a mountain lion, followed by the familiar loud Wo, Wo, Wo, Woooo of a Barred Owl.

By this point in the conversation I felt sure that Ron and Cris are true birders. They then casually mentioned their life lists. In their opinions just hearing a bird, like the rare Bicknell's Thrush that can sometimes be seen at the top of NY's highest mountains, is not enough. For them it is necessary to personally see, hear and positively identify a bird to add it to a life list. It didn't surprise me that Ron and Cris intend to spend a month in Central America on a birding expedition later this winter. No doubt about it, they are the real thing.

Good estimates of the number of birders are hard to come by, but I think it's safe to say the numbers are quite large. Membership in the 500+ chapters of the National Audubon Society is in the hundreds of thousands. A survey in the 1980s found 11% of North Americans occupied themselves by watching birds at least 20 days of the year. Another guesstimate in the late 1980s claimed there were 61 million birders. In its first two years of publication the expensive new Sibley Guide to Birds sold 500,000 copies. You have to be pretty serious to have bought a Sibley and yes, we have one.

Only some of this very large cohort qualify as true birders by my definition. For me perhaps the key characteristic of a true birder is the “Life List.” I know a lot of birds, but I don't know or care how many. A true birder keeps a careful life list and seeks to add new birds whenever possible. There are about 10,000 distinct species of birds worldwide. Only a small number of people have seen and identified more than 7,000. In England a truly obsessed birder is called a “twitcher.” Apparently this term originated in the 1950s as a sort of tribute to the nervous behavior of Howard Medhurst, a British birdwatcher of the time who would travel long distances, often on short notice, to see a rare bird.

Birds animate the natural world. I've learned a lot about being aware of my surroundings from the serious birders I've encountered in my travels. They enjoy sharing what they know and bring a learned amateur's enthusiasm to any discussion of the outdoors. Next time you see someone with a spotting scope, stop and ask them what they see.