Subject: Birders are like alcoholics.
Date: Aug 14 14:49:56 1997
From: Norton360 at aol.com - Norton360 at aol.com


TWEETS.
The recent thread on decreasing birders is interesting.
My title comes from the frequent quote that an alcoholic is someone who
drinks more than you do.
A birder is someone who does as much birding (or more) than you do.
We probably all know people who turn out for and do good jobs on Xmas
Counts and such like but are not birding much in between. Or people with high
life lists and knowledge who go on birding trips to the far ends of the world
but won't go out locally. Or people who previously chased birds all over the
state and built impressive state lists and now stir themselves only to fill
gaps in their stamp album like the Hawk Owl in Cheney. That is fine but is
that person an active birder? It is very difficult to define. The important
thing is that it is claimed that young birders are less common than they used
to be. This may be true and it is true that the youngsters are apt to be very
intense and adept. They also tend to keep at it more than those who stumble
in to brding at a more advanced age. However, I feel that even the intense
young birders are outweighed by a larger number of more casual birders of the
same age. I never did see in my almost 50 years of birding more than a few
intense young birders in any place that I have lived. I feel that birding is
probably alive and well and will increase as the wilderness disappears. A
birding tour to Great Britain with an organized tour and bike trips around GB
revealed an interest much greater than in the still relatively untamed US.
Also it revealed a greater use of subscription bird alerts, cell phones and
more rules on ethical birding. The number of birders per capita in the
civilized eastern US is much greater than it is in the still relatively
pristine west until you get to coastal California which is anything but
pristine and there you have activity that rivals Massachusetts or even
England.
I pity anyone who sets out to define a birder and to enumerate them and
say that they are increasing or decreasing.
Bob Norton from the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula