Birding

I

Introduction

Birding, also known as bird watching, activity of observing and identifying birds in their natural environment for personal enjoyment or for educational purposes. Birders learn to recognize the distinctive feathers, colors, and structure of various bird species, as well as their calls, characteristic behaviors, and habitats. In the United States some 47 million people participate in birding, making it one of the most popular of all outdoor recreational activities.

Birders often keep detailed lists of the bird species they have observed, the date the species was viewed, and the species’ location, starting with those found in their own yards and neighborhoods. As their interest grows and their identification skills develop, many birders take pride in the growing list of species that they have viewed in locations further afield, such as other states or provinces, other countries, or even other continents. Many birders challenge themselves and one another to set records for the most species viewed in a 24-hour period, in an entire year, or over a lifetime.

Collecting personal lists of identified birds can be more than just a pleasurable activity. In many cases these records also serve a scientific purpose. Skilled birders from around the world who participate as volunteers in research projects gather information on the health of bird populations. These studies often provide the best available data—sometimes the only data—about bird life in specific areas and during specific seasons. In this way data gathered by birders may play an important role in determining land use and wildlife-management policies aimed at preserving birds and their habitats.

II

History of Birding

Birding in North America has its origins in the first half of the 1800s. The discoveries and publications of pioneering American naturalists such as Alexander Wilson, John James Audubon, Thomas Nuttall, John Kirk Townsend, and John Cassin excited interest in the bird life of the Americas and prepared the way for the modern scientific study of birds, known as ornithology. In 1872 American naturalist Elliott Coues made a key contribution to the field when he developed one of the first systematic lists of North American birds. This comprehensive list, which provided a means to standardize bird classification and naming, became the basis of the Check-List of North American Birds, first published by the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) in 1886. Periodically revised and updated by the AOU, this checklist remains a valued reference for birders.

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As the 19th century drew to a close, scientific interest in birds grew alongside a new fad for using bird plumage in high fashion, particularly for women’s hats. In addition, bird eggs were collected as a hobby, and a wider variety of birds were considered tasty delicacies. As a result of these trends, birds were slaughtered at unprecedented rates, eventually resulting in the extinction of the great auk, passenger pigeon, and Eskimo curlew, and the near-extinction of many others, including the trumpeter swan and many species of herons, egrets, and terns.

Appalled by the widespread slaughter of birds, in 1886 George Bird Grinnell, then editor of Forest and Stream magazine, formed the country’s first bird preservation organization. Named the Audubon Society in honor of American naturalist and painter John James Audubon, the organization attracted more than 38,000 members in its first three months. Unable to keep up with the large membership, Grinnell disbanded the organization in 1888. However, from 1896 to 1899, 15 states formed local chapters of Audubon societies. Society members forged an environmental movement to create legislation that would protect birds. Among the laws passed as a result of this environmental movement was the New York State Audubon Plumage Law (1910), which banned the sales of plumes of birds native to New York. In 1918 the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act was enacted to protect all native birds in the United States and Canada.

Some technological innovations helped transform the scientific study of birds into a recreational hobby. The introduction of the automobile in the early 1900s, followed by extensive road construction, made it easier for people to travel to wilderness areas for recreation and to view wildlife. At about the same time, improvement in the quality of optical lenses made lightweight binoculars with strong magnification more readily available. Before the advent of modern binoculars, scientists were only able to identify birds that they had captured. But modern binoculars made it easy for scientists and nonscientists alike to identify birds in their natural habitat. American ornithologist Frank Chapman correctly predicted that these innovations would help birding grow into a popular hobby when he wrote in his prototype of the modern field guide Color Key to North American Birds (1903), “Identification of the bird in the bush is its sole end; an end, however, which we trust will prove but the beginning of a new and potent interest in nature.”

Chapman founded Bird-Lore magazine in 1899 (still published today as Audubon magazine), and it became the first publication to unite skilled amateur observers with scientists in order to further bird conservation and education. Chapman also founded the annual Christmas bird count in 1900 as an alternative to an annual holiday bird hunt. Today the National Audubon Society sponsors the Christmas Bird Count. As the largest and longest-running wildlife survey, it provides crucial details about the health of North American bird populations and their environment. Each year over 45,000 volunteers from all 50 states, every Canadian province, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the Pacific Islands, count every individual bird and bird species over one calendar day (from midnight to midnight), within well-defined geographic areas.

By the early 20th century, birding had developed as an outgrowth of strong field research and the careful bird classification performed in museums. A birder’s goal soon became twofold. One goal was to make identifications of living birds under field conditions as accurate as those made from museum specimens. The second goal was to document the occurrence of birds to better understand bird migration and distribution. During the first half of the century, American ornithologists Joseph Grinnell, director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley, and Ludlow Griscom, curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, inspired new generations of observers to search for unusual birds, perfect bird identification techniques, and accurately record findings. One of these young birders was American naturalist Roger Tory Peterson, whose pocket-sized Field Guide to the Birds (1934) made birding accessible with schematic illustrations that clearly portrayed color patterns and distinctive marks.

Throughout most of the 20th century, museums or conservation groups such as the National Audubon Society sponsored the only birding organizations. With the founding of the American Birding Foundation (ABA) in 1969, birders acquired a new voice in the form of the ABA’s Birding magazine, which provides major field-identification articles, publication and equipment reviews, and site guides for top birding locations.

III

Where Birds Can Be Viewed

Birds are found throughout the world. They have adapted to an amazing variety of habitats. More than 800 species of birds live in North America north of Mexico. In the United States, areas with varied topography, such as the states of Texas and California, provide a number of different ecosystems that can support almost 600 species. Even the most heavily populated urban areas offer a fascinating array of bird life across the seasons. For example, more than 100 bird species regularly nest within New York City, and more than 350 species have been identified, at one time or another, in New York City’s Central Park. Birds also flourish in some of the most remote and seemingly inhospitable regions of the world. Over 230 bird species occur in icy Greenland, and 272 species have been documented in Canada's Yukon Territory, where temperatures can plunge to –46°C (-50°F) during the winter.

Intentionally and unintentionally, humans have shaped living environments in ways that are well suited to the needs of many bird species. Starlings, house sparrows, swallows, and rock doves nest on buildings in cities, towns, and farms. The chimney swift has abandoned hollow trees for chimneys as a nest site in urban areas. Mallards and Canada geese—once exclusively wild, migratory species—now live year-round in the open spaces found in city parks and golf courses. Nearly all purple martins, a songbird species that once used the abandoned nests of woodpeckers or the natural cavities of cliffs or dead trees, now live primarily in structures specifically constructed for them by humans. The peregrine falcon nests on tall buildings in many cities.

IV

Backyard Birding

Some birders travel around the world to view a rare bird, but most birders are content to view the varied species seen in their own backyard and nearby neighborhoods. To attract birds to a backyard, birders provide some or all of a bird’s three basic needs—water, shelter, and food. Birders often study the feeding and nesting behavior of the birds they wish to attract. They then design their backyard so that it will be attractive from a bird’s point of view. Landscaping yards with familiar native plants provides protective cover for birds, along with edible fruits, nectar-bearing flowers, nesting sites and materials, and places to forage for insects. The sounds of trickling or dripping water from birdbaths and small, sheltered pools attract birds. These water sources offer a window into bird behavior as birds flock to them to drink and bathe.

Wood ducks, woodpeckers, tree swallows, and wrens are among the many species that use birdhouses, also known as nest boxes. These humanmade wooden structures provide a safe nesting environment, particularly in urban areas, where natural nesting sites may be limited. Ideally nest boxes should provide adequate ventilation, so that heat can escape, and proper drainage, so that the nest remains dry. A nest box with a removable panel permits easy cleaning at the end of the season so that rodents and other pests will not move into the nest. The size of the entrance hole of a nest box will also determine the type of bird that uses it. For example, house wrens require an entrance hole that is 3 cm (1.25 in) in diameter while a northern flicker requires a 6.3 cm (2.5 in) hole.

Birders use different bird feeders depending on the type of birds that they wish to attract. Bird-feeding systems include simple platforms on a post, hanging tubes that dispense seeds, and suet and sugar-water feeders. A platform feeder with millet seeds attracts doves and sparrows, while a tube feeder filled with black oil sunflower seeds attracts goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches, and titmice. Birds such as woodpeckers and bushtits that eat insects and other invertebrates are drawn to suet feeders. Hummingbirds flock to sugar-water feeders, but many birders find it more satisfying to lure them to their backyards with colorful flowering plants, such as trumpet vine and honeysuckle. Backyard birders help birds by cleaning feeders and nest boxes regularly to prevent pest infestation and exposure to parasites and infectious agents such as Salmonella bacteria, which may live in discarded food.

Domestic cats are perhaps the greatest menace for birds. The American Bird Conservancy, based in Washington, D.C., estimates that cats kill hundreds of millions of birds each year. Cat owners can make their backyards a safe haven for birds by keeping cats indoors or in an enclosed area. Food sources, such as garbage or outside pet food dishes, should be removed so as not to attract neighborhood cats or stray cats. Locate feeders, birdbaths, and nest boxes away from brushy vegetation or other structures that cats can use to conceal themselves and ambush unwary birds.

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