You can now, and in a half dozen stores, all stocking many different models. National surveys show that between 1982 and 1995, the number of us who participated in at least casual birding soared from 21.2 million to 54.1 million, with the greatest increases right here in Ole Dixie. By 1995, birding had become the fastest growing recreational activity in the country, even ahead of hiking and skiing. Birding has not yet replaced football or Southern Baptists, but folks are filling feeders with black sunflower seeds and poking around with binoculars, trying to decide if that red bird out there is a summer tanager, cardinal, or maybe a far-straying pyrrhuloxia. For y'all who haven't yet taken flight, songbirds are your cardinals, bluebirds, actually any of several hundred species of birds in our region that sing.
Many folks believe they are in drastic decline.
Folks that notice such things have been on panic's edge for years. These birds, and many others like ospreys and brown pelicans suffered well-documented declines due to widespread use of DDT and similar chemicals. One of the most influential of these alarms was raised in the 1980s. John Terborgh in 1989, presented evidence from a variety of sources that as a group, the songbirds were going down the tubes. Everywhere he looked, he found that human impact on the landscape was translated into trouble for birds.