Subject: young birders/female birders
Date: Jan 4 15:41:57 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


Charles Vaughan was not surprised that there were so few young birders; if
I can paraphrase, he thought birding skills take time to develop and thus a
birding commitment is more likely in adults.

Well, Charles, you may be right; I hope so. A lot of the hotshot birders
of today started when they were around 12. Are there an equivalent
(relative to population size) number of 12-year-old bird fanatics out there
now? That remains to be seen in another decade or so. How many
22-year-olds are leading field trips out there right now?

And speaking of age differences, how about sex? We haven't explored in
this medium the reason why females are so underrepresented among those of
"hotshot" birder status, even though they are overrepresented in most
groups of birders that one encounters. There are either nature or nurture
reasons or both--any ideas? Some will want me to define "hotshot." I
guess I mean a combination of dedicated and knowledgeable, with the
emphasis on the latter. People who write bird books, people who lead
nature tours, people on bird-record committees. From a competitive
standpoint, but often correlated with knowledgeable, people who have seen
the most species of birds in their state. Hopefully we can agree on the
definition.

I wouldn't make such comments unless I loved a good rhubarb; I guess I do.
But more than that, I love to stimulate people really to think about why as
well as what.

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416