Subject: Re: CBCs
Date: Jan 4 11:18:16 1995
From: Stuart MacKay - stuart.mackay at mccaw.com


Dennis wrote:

> How can we make birds as interesting as sex?

I always thought the question was "how can we make sex as interesting as birds ?"

Seriously though,

The lack of young recruits is showing up on the other side of the Atlantic as well. I've just
turned 30 and in my experience "my generation" seems to be the last which produced
any number of birders to speak of. I first started birding (every day) when I was 12. There
were 3 other birders, within a 2-3 years of me. Up in northern Scotland, home-grown
birders are very, very rare, and used to cause some amount of bemusement (until a
female Harlequin turned up one year and Wick (my home town, population 7500) was
inundated with birders from all over Europe), so having peers who were similarly afflicted
helped to keep things going, when it got tough (but that's another story).

I think kids in general are very much more aware of the world around them from an
environmental angle, but how much of this is rote learning ? How much of this interest is
created from what they see on TV ? Does the interest in the environment start and stop
there - are there many who go out and get their hands 'dirty' ?

The implications probably go much further, than "Will the birders return in Spring,
Mommy ?". TV environmentalism is certainly great for Giant Panda's, Tigers, etc, but is
it any good for <your favourite insect/amphibian/fungi/.....>

Stuart