Just noticing, as the 'female birder' thread continues, that there seems
to be a dismissal of the senior women right from the start. They are
referred to as 'grannies,' as widows needing recreation after the loss of
a husband, and as lacking 'true birder instincts' such as the careful
inspection of huge flocks for the rare vagrant. Well, since I moved to
Washington this summer I've been going on expeditions with 'Canyon
Birders', a group operating out of Lewiston-Clarkston. The three
sparkplugs of the group are three women in their late 60's or early 70's
- all with living husbands and two with living mothers! Plenty of home
life to take care of. They can definitely bird you right into the ground.
They wouldn't hesitate to screen the big flocks, drive the hundred miles
necessary for the rare gull, etc. They regularly travel to distant sites
or foreign countries for new bird thrills.
I don't think they're atypical...


On Thu, 5 Jan 1995, Michael Smith wrote:
Harriet Whitehead
Washington State University
whitehea at wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu
> On Thu, 5 Jan 1995, Dennis Paulson wrote:
>
> > But David, how do you then explain the presence of more women than men on
> > birding trips? I know many of them are retired older women, some of whom
> > have lost a husband and find this a wonderful recreational activity. But
> > then why aren't a lot of older women taking up golf or other obsessive
> > recreational activities? Lots of older men also do birding; it's the
> > younger women who are relatively scarce.
> >
> > And there are at least as many female as male grad students in zoology (but
> > not on zoology faculties, yet).
>
> I think you missed the point. The older women you mentioned on field
> trips are not 'obsessed' as David mentioned, neither are female grad
> students in zoology. A more useful measure might be to tally all the
> birders who travelled more than 100 miles to see the Ross' Gull, and then
> make some age/sex breakdown. I think David's ideas would come off
> correctly then. Going on a field trip or being a zoology student
> doesn't make one a birder/lister/twitcher (whatever you want to call it),
> driving 10 hours round trip for 3 hours of birding is a little
> different. The same is true for those who don't twitch, how many little
> old ladies will look through a roosting flock of 5000 calidrines for a
> juvenile stint?
>
> ____________________________
> Mike Smith
> Univ. of Washington, Seattle
> whimbrel at u.washington.edu
>
>