I first started birding in 1971 at age 13. All of my early
experiences were in small groups of young birders my own age.
The only larger group experience I remember from that time was
one sponsered by the Eugene Natural History Society and led by
Larry McQueen.He had brought along a tape recorder and played
Sora at Royal Avenue and we all got to see Soras interacting
with the tape player. Tape playback in 1971 was pretty new
stuff and we were all thrilled.

My personal preference is to bird alone or in very small groups
of people who share my birding style. My personal interests as
a birder lean toward the ecological, and I spend a lot of time
in the same places, tracking changes over time. I very rarely
go chasing rarities, especially if I have to drive very far to
see them. When I travel elsewhere, I like to spend time in places
rather than spend time targeting species. I prefer going to a
place, renting a car and making discoveries rather than attach
myself to a tour group. As a result, my bird lists from Arizona, Texas and Florida are
probably smaller than they would have been
had I paid for professional help. The trade-off is, I'm on my
own schedule. I can linger. I can pick up the pace. I can return
to an interesting spot again later. I can change my focus to
flowers or butterflies or museums without any grief. I can bring
my non-birding wife along. I can start early. I can schedule
naps.

I do quite a bit of group leading, however. Once a month I
co-lead trip to places around Clatsop County. I am routinely
tapped to lead school groups, garden clubs, elderhostel, etc.
My philosophy as a group leader is to teach context. Birds
without habitat make no sense to me, so I identify trees and
shrubs, point out mole trackways and butterfly larvae, and talk
about invasive species. I prefer small groups to large ones.
In bigger groups, somebody always gets left out. I can
ID a lot more species by song or call than I choose to point out.
Some calls are too obscure or difficult explain, some are too
high in frequency for some people in the group (if they
can't hear kinglets, why rub it in?).

My only experience with the mega-tour was at the ABA convention
in Eugene a couple years back. I co-lead bus-tours to the Central
Oregon Coast. The professionals from out of state seemed awfully
dependent on their IPods and could not answer questions about
local flora and fauna. There were members of the group who
clearly expected to see every bird, expected the leaders to call
them out with recordings and became very aggitated when they
failed to see, say, Hermit Warbler. But with 3 leaders, I also
noted that the group self-sorted. Rabid listers followed the
IPods, general naturalists followed me and the self-learners
drifted off by themselves.

I suspect that there is no one-size-fits-all learning style for
birders. I suspect there are people who like the big groups for
social reasons rather than birding reasons. I suspect there are
even a few who aren't interested in learning, just collecting.

--
Mike Patterson
Astoria, OR
celata at pacifier.com

Christmas Bird Count Calendar and FAQ for Oregon and Washington
http://home.pacifier.com/~mpatters/cbc/cbc_WAOR_reg.html