# Birdwatching

Birdwatching (birding, twitching, or amateur ornithology) is observing or identifying wild birds in their natural surroundings. Birdwatching generally consists of recreational activity or citizen science, as contrasted to professional research in ornithology.

## Quotes

* Birds become more and more fascinating, not less, the more you watch them.
** H. G. Alexander, "Preface". Seventy Years of Birdwatching. Poyser Monographs. A & C Black. 2010. ISBN 1408136988. (1st edition, 1974)
* It is a fun exercise among naturalists 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.
** Mark Cocker, (18 March 2021)"Review: A Curious Boy: The Making of a Scientist by Richard Fortey". The Guardian.
* 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.
** Pete Dunne, The Feather Quest (1992), ISBN 0-395-92790-0, p. 107
* If you enjoy watching birds, you stand in good company. There are, in the estimate of the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment (U.S. Forest Service), 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.
** Pete Dunne, Pete Dunne on Bird Watching: The How-to, Where-to, and When-to of Birding. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2003. p. 3. ISBN 0395906865.
* Anyone who is interested in birds eventually reaches the point when he or she joins the BTO, 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.
** Crispin Fisher, (January 1985)"review of Enjoying Ornithology: A Celebration of Fifty Years of the British Trust for Ornithology 1933–1983, edited and compiled by Ronald Hickling". Oryx 19 (1): 50–51. DOI:10.1017/S003060530001961X. (See Ronald Hickling.)
* 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 Charles Hartshorne 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."
** Todd Newberry, The Ardent Birder: On the Craft of Birdwatching. Natural History Series. Berkeley, California: Ten Speed Press. 2005. p. 4. ISBN 1580087159. (illustrated by Gene Holtan)
* ... Remember, if you happen to find a nest during the breeding season, leave the nest as undisturbed as possible. Back away, and do not touch the nest, eggs, or young birds. Often squirrels, raccoons, several other mammals, crows, jays, grackles, and cowbirds 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.
** Roger Tory Peterson Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America. Peterson Field Guide Series (7th ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. p. 7. ISBN 1328771431.
* Bird books have been a constant presence in my life, from Ladybird Books to field guides via fiction and non-fiction with one thing in common. I can sit down with the RSPB 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 choughs 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 nightjars before I actually see one rather than just hear their ghostly clicking.
** Nicholas Royle, (9 August 2017)"Top 10 books about birds". The Guardian. (The 2017 book An English Guide to Birdwatching was written by a different Nicholas Royle.)
* Birding and ornithology; sport and science; amateur and professional. The gulf seems pretty wide today, but in fact it's 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 it's hard to find an academically trained ornithologist with a string of initials after his or her name who isn't also an avid birder.
** Scott Weidensaul, Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2008. pp. 3–4. ISBN 0156035189. (1st edition 2007)

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Birdwatching on Wikipedia
* Media related to Birdwatching on Wikimedia Commons
* All About Birds – Cornell Lab of Ornithology