Hello, tweeters.

There is often discussion of how many birders there are in this
country, and some sources persist in calling it 60-70 million, no
matter how often we curmudgeons point out the unlikeliness of this.
It's often said that birders outnumber all kinds of other
enthusiasts. While attending the Simon & Garfunkel concert in the Key
Arena Saturday night, it dawned on me how many people were there just
to see and hear a few hours of music (very good music, of course, and
it was a wonderful concert). I thought there must be thousands of
people there, but I had no idea how many. I just looked it up in the
web and followed that with some other numbers. Here is a rundown of
sports stadiums in Seattle:

17,000 seats in Key Arena (pro basketball)
47,000 in Safeco Field (pro baseball)
67,000 in Seahawks Stadium (pro football)
72,500 in Husky Stadium (UW football)

These are very often full. Now I want someone to convince me there
are 72,500 birders in the Seattle area, or even 17,000.

Oh yes. The average ticket price was hovering somewhere up near $100,
and how many birders would pay $100 for three hours of birding? How
many would pay $100 for a life bird?

Good birding, thou rare and special few.

Dennis
--
Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
1500 N. Warner, #1088
Tacoma, WA 98416-1088
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html