The lines are quite blurry in my opinion and I think its often best when
they are. When lines between Birders/Bird Watchers and Scientists get to
clear-cut I have frequently heard complaints about one side not
understanding the other ones point of view, i.e. Birders only caring about
lists or Scientists so stuck up they only recognize their own loops.
When I started birding as a yound kid some 13 or 14 years ago I started
because I developed a fasination at the avian world and the diversity
contained within. Soon questions began to come up and I as a curious kid
wanted answers (luckily I haven't grown up yet :)) As I began to recieve
pieces of answers my curiousity was sparked more and when I heard about
the downward trends of many species I decided that as a career I wanted to
help make a difference by looking into some of the questions that are
still unanswered and hopefully when finding pieces of those answers I
could help to preserve some of the areas.
Through all of my college studies (soon I will be done with my B.S. in
Wildlife) I have maintained my ambition to be a birder. Frequently I
have jumped at the chance to run off at the top of a whim and perhaps
make 2 or 3 trips to see a bird miles away and not willing to go home
until I've seen that bird.
So yes there are lines and sometimes I have to make those lines clear to
myself but there is no reason why many amauter or professional
ornithogists cannot be birders as well (as many are). So I really don't
care what you call me, a lister, birder, birdwatcher, scientist, loonie I
have been all the above mentioned and probably more. In fact we all have
been loonie many times, afterall what kind of sane person stands in a
field during sleet and hale to get just one more look at that sparrow,
when the sparrow even has better sense to seek the shelter of nearby
bushes. But if we were sane, well that just wouldn't be any fun now would
it!

Scott Downes
sdownes at u.washington.edu
Seattle WA



On Wed, 21 Oct 1998, Deb Beutler wrote:

> Birder, bird watcher, wildlife watcher, twitcher, amateur field
> ornithologist, and professional avian ecologist/ornithologist. I am all of
> the above (and so much more)!
>
> When I drove all the way to Hailey, Idaho, from Pullman, WA, to see the
> Siberian Accentor in the middle of winter, I was a twitcher. When I stopped
> in Lewiston to pick up the Northern Cardinal and wandered all around Hailey,
> Ketchum, and Sun Valley to increase my Blaine County, Idaho, year, and life
> lists, I was a birder. When I sit at my front window and admire the beauty
> of the Bohemian Waxwings striping my mountain ash of berries, I am a bird
> watcher. When I am watching the flying squirrels licking the sugar water
> out of my hummingbird feeder, I am wildlife watcher. When I am visiting
> Mann Lake, Idaho, every few days and making detailed notes on what is there,
> including counting the number of individuals and the behavior of the birds,
> I am an amateur field ornithologist. When I am standing in a clear-cut,
> devoid of birds, at 5:00 a.m., after driving two hours on twisty logging
> roads full of logging trucks, to gather data, so that I can analyze it to
> test a hypothesis and write my thesis and (hopefully) publish a paper or two
> in a peer-reviewed, scientific journal, I am an ornithologist (or avian
> ecologist). When I am presenting a paper at a meeting of the AOU, Wilson's
> Ornithological Society or Cooper's Ornithological Society, I am an
> ornithologist.
>
> I am also a "bird freak" (most of my family call me this), a
> taxon-biased throw-back (my professional colleagues call me this) or a
> crazed football fan (my significant other calls me that).
>
> My point is the lines are very blurry. When I am doing one thing, I am
> usually doing another. Even this football-crazed fan can't help but watch
> the kinglet in the crab apple tree, even when it is fourth and goal on the
> two.
> The great thing about birds is you can enjoy them at any level you want.
> If you want to get scientific about it, you can. If you just want to wander
> around the woods and know what you are hearing, you can. If you just want
> to enjoy the beauty of those feathered critters that come to your backyard
> feeder, you can. If you want to record your bird sightings to increase the
> body of knowledge on bird distribution and migration timing, you can do that
> too. If you just want to have the biggest list, you can. If you want to do
> all of the above, you can. One isn't any better than the other.
> And ornithologist doesn't equal birder. Some of the best ornithologists
> I know are not birders. They study birds at scientific subjects only. And
> many people who study birds don't want to considered "ornithologists". They
> prefer to identify themselves as "physiologists", "ecologists", "taxonomist"
> because the discipline is the important thing for them. They study birds
> only because they are the taxa that answers the questions they are
> interested in researching. However, I am an ornithologist; I study birds
> because I love birds. It is not a popular stand with many biologists but
> too darn bad!!!!! I love them and I am obsessed by them.
>
> Deb
>
>
> Deborah K. Beutler
> Dept. Zoology
> Washington State University
> Pullman, Whitman Co., WA
>
> dbeutler at wsunix.wsu.edu
>
>
>