Birdwatching

"If you enjoy watching birds, you stand in good company. There are, in the estimate of the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment (), 70 million bird watchers in the United States (and an equally representative number in Canada) — people who in the course of their lives make time to see and enjoy birds."

"It is a fun exercise among s to try to pinpoint a childhood moment when they deviated from the path of “ordinary” people and set out on their tangent towards the other parts of life. American birders use a nice shorthand expression for such an epiphany: “the spark bird” – the encounter that switched on the nature-loving light."

"Birds become more and more fascinating, not less, the more you watch them."

"But since it was birders he was dealing with, there wasn’t any harm just letting us in on the honor system. There was no question in his mind (or ours) that we would ante up when departing. That’s just the way birders are."

"We ardent birders share not only a skill and craft but also a state of mind—more, a state of heart, one akin to love. All the usual explanations of why such an improbable pastime as birdwatching should be so profoundly rewarding—the thrill of the chase, days of companionship outdoors, enigmatic identifications solved, competition and even scorekeeping, witnessing nature in action, times and places of great beauty—all these sorts of reason fall short unless they acknowledge those extraordinary moments when, as once put it, "Life touches life." Honoring these moments, I think, is the largely unspoken bond among ardent birds. When we do talk about why we go birding, time and again these private experiences are what we birders recall as "when lightning struck."

"Anyone who is interested in birds eventually reaches the point when he or she joins the , or loses enthusiasm. The Trust has after its first 50 years involved itself in every aspect of ornithology, simply because as the supreme shepherd of this pervasive occupation it has enabled the birdwatcher to expand his or her enjoyment. It has done this by supplying him or her with the motivation and methodology to keep records, and by applying those records in enlightened ways to reveal trends and changes in the status of birds in Britain."

"... Remember, if you happen to find a during the , leave the nest as undisturbed as possible. Back away, and do not touch the nest, eggs, or young birds. Often squirrels, s, several other mammals, s, s, s, and s are more than happy to have you "point out" a nest and will raid it if you disrupt the site or call attention to it. Many people find juvenile birds that have just left the nest and may appear to be alone. Usually they are not lost but are under the watchful eye of a parent bird and are best left in place rather than scooped up and taken to a foreign environment. In the winter, nest hunting can be great fun and has little impact, as most nests will never be used again. They are easy to see once the foliage is gone, and it can be a challenge to attempt to identify the maker."

"s have been a constant presence in my life, from to field guides via fiction and non-fiction with one thing in common. I can sit down with the Handbook of British Birds by Peter Holden and Tim Cleeves and soon find myself as engrossed as I would be by, say, Elizabeth Stott’s uncanny avian tale The Rhododendron Canopy. Many elements cross over between fiction and guide book: character and identification, habitat/setting, voice, movement/migration, even narrative arc in the form of a quest. I might be reminded of the time I went looking for s and got lucky, watching them for 20 minutes while lying on my stomach by a cliff edge, or I might wonder how many times I will have to go looking for s before I actually see one rather than just hear their ghostly clicking."

"Birding and ornithology; sport and science; amateur and professional. The gulf seems pretty wide today, but in fact its a fairly recent phenomenon. For most of the history of bird study, there was no such division; the ornithologist were all gifted amateurs, and the science of studying birds was enmeshed with the joy of watching them. ... And its hard to find an academically trained ornithologist with a string of initials after his or her name who isnt also an avid birder."