I have never been a bird-watcher per se, but I have loved to watch birds my whole life. When I was a child, England was cooler, and we always had snow in Bournemouth in the winter. And then we fed the birds and identified those who came to the bird table. One winter when I was sick, we fixed a board outside my bedroom window, and a pair of robins (British robins, the Christmas card guys with red breasts) didn’t just pluck up the courage to come into my room for bread crumbs—but in the spring they actually made a nest in the corner of my bookcase! They tolerated my walking in and out as they hatched and fed the youngsters, and I had the thrill of watching the fledglings take their first insecure flights from my windowsill. As I write today, I am taking note of the birds who arrive to sample the wild birdseed, peanuts, and “fat balls” on my (new) windowsill bird table—robins, blackbirds, starlings, greenfinches, blue tits, coal tits, great tits, collared doves, wood pigeons, a jay, and a magpie.
Thousands of people set out food for birds, especially in winter: It brings new interest to their lives. These people often become passionate about the preservation of birds—the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is the best-funded animal organization in the UK and, as a result, is able to carry out important conservation work around the planet.
In the UK, the lack of suitable nesting sites (old barns and other outhouses) often prevents barn owls from occupying otherwise suitable habitat. In an effort to persuade people to introduce nest boxes for these owls on their property, a demonstration model was set up near a busy street. To everyone’s amazement, a pair of barn owls decided to give it their seal of approval and set up house in this seemingly inappropriate place! As a result of the media attention, hundreds of people learned about the plight of these most magical of owls.
It is not surprising that people living in urban areas sometimes become passionate about birds. First, birds can help them to reconnect with the natural world since—except in the most polluted places where almost all of nature has been destroyed—birds share the brightness of their lives with the human inhabitants of towns and cities. And many of them bring not only color but also the glory of their songs. Second, birds, in a way, are symbols of freedom, able to fly up toward the sky. We all, at some point, want to fly, to feel the wind rushing past, to soar effortlessly up and away. The other day I had a letter from a prisoner who said that his life had been transformed when he was put on duty in the kitchen and was able to watch the birds who gathered around the bins outside in search of scraps. This had given him a whole new interest, and he was able to reconnect, even in a small way, with the natural world from which, for many weary months, he had been locked away.
Birding: Meet the Twitchers and Chasers
There is one hobby that brings literally millions of people around the world in close contact with nature—birding. As Thane Maynard has told me, more than fifty-seven million Americans alone identify themselves as bird-watchers. Many New Yorkers rise before dawn, at least once a week, to go out into Central Park, binoculars, notebooks, and field guides at the ready. Birding is open to all, and people do not have to travel far to enjoy their chosen hobby—although some certainly do. In spring and fall, birders flock to designated places along the flight paths of migratory species, especially those of the raptors and cranes. Some birders are frantically eager to see for themselves a rare visitor and, when such an individual or group of individuals is reported, they race to the location in a frenzy so that they can add the species to the list of those whom they, personally, have observed. On one occasion in the UK, five thousand people gathered to try to see a single golden-winged warbler!
In the UK, birders are referred to as “twitchers”—a term said to derive from an enthusiastic birder in the early 1960s who would travel very early in freezing weather to see a particular bird, and arrive “twitching from the cold!” (The term is catching on in North America, although there they are generally known as “chasers.”) In both the United States and United Kingdom, there are competitions each year, with prizes given for those twitchers or chasers with the longest list of birds seen. Birding is also extremely popular in Ireland, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands. And recently I was asked to write an introduction to Backyard Birds by FXJ Pereira, published in 2006, a book that will help open the eyes of people to the magic world of birds in India and give strong support to efforts to protect them.
Many birders take part in censuses of bird populations and their migratory patterns, recording such data as the number of a particular species seen in a day, the total number of birds of all species counted in a given area, an estimate of the number of migrating birds passing overhead per minute, and so on. This “citizen science” can help ornithologists and conservationists in many ways: for instance, by monitoring increases or decreases in seasonal populations, which can then be used to push for the addition of new areas of protected habitat or, conversely, to lobby against the building of a new highway or other proposed development. And you can bet that all those twitchers will lobbying for the birds.
The passion for birding is gradually spreading around the globe through tourism. Birding tours are offered by tour companies in an increasing number of other countries including Egypt, Mongolia, Thailand, Antarctica, Greenland, Honduras, and all over the Americas. And in some countries in Africa such as Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa, the presence of large numbers of bird-watchers in areas that may be lacking in the traditional tourist attractions—lions, leopards and cheetahs, buffalo, rhinos and elephants—can be crucial in helping to protect ecologically important environments. Some local guides have become talented amateur ornithologists.
Many birders become active campaigners, involving themselves in a variety of projects to protect wilderness areas and endangered species. When ornithologists in Taiwan sent out information about the immediate threat to the pheasant-tailed jacana posed by plans to build a new railway right through the largest of its two remaining breeding sites, hundreds of letters of complaint from around the United States poured into the offices of Ms. Nita Ing, president and CEO of the company. When the surveyors were unable to propose an alternative route for the train, Nita, after much thought, decided they would have to move the breeding ground! She bought up large areas of reclaimed wetland, diverted the water supply back, thus flooding the area, and hired people to plant lotus and water chestnuts for the jacana. I went with Nita (and the then-president of Taiwan) to the restored wetland just two years after its completion. Already more pheasant-tailed jacana were nesting there than at the original site the year before, and more chicks survived! It is worth bearing in mind that, if the railway had not been planned, it is more than likely that farmers would have gone on reclaiming the wetland, bit by bit, until the breeding ground would have all but gone before anyone noticed!
