To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them…Elliott Erwitt
How many Americans watch birds? How many Americans care to know how many Americans watch birds? More importantly, at least for this essay, how many Americans photograph birds and wildlife, and, in general, nature?
The Outdoor Foundation, in its annual Outdoor Participation Report, estimated that around 14 million Americans watched birds in 2013. That number, around 4.9% of the population age 6 and older, has been relatively stable since 2007.
The number of birders committed enough to escape backyard feeding, between 14 and 18 million, underestimates the impact of the recreation. Not only does the number of birders matter, even more important are the numbers of days spent watching birds outdoors, at least from the standpoint of public use and economic impact, User-days (or outings) is a more accurate predictor of tourism and resource impacts than the overall number of recreationists.
A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera…Dorothea Lange
According to the Outdoor Foundation, birding is the third most favorite American recreation when measured by frequency of participation (lagging behind only running/jogging and biking). Birders and wildlife viewers averaged 39 outings per-person per-year, for a total of 1 billion outings in 2013. For a comparison, fishing is the fourth most favorite recreation, and anglers averaged around 20 outings per-person per-year.
The USFWS survey looks at a variety of ways that people watch wildlife. People feed wildlife, observe wildlife, and photograph wildlife. I am interested in the trends in these activities, particular the growth in photographing birds and/or wildlife when compared to observation.
In 2001, there are 20,080,000 wildlife observers who left home to recreate, and there were 9,427,000 wildlife photographers. Ten years later, the number of wildlife observers had stayed relatively flat (a 1% decline to 19,808,000), while photography had grown by 31% (to 12,354,000 away-from-home wildlife photographers). Outings tracked a similar pattern. Observers spent 295,345,000 days in the field in 2001, dropping to 268,798,000 in 2011 (a decline of 9%). Wildlife photographers spent 76,324,000 days out in 2001, growing to 110,459,000 in 2011 (an increase of 45%).
To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event…Henri Cartier-Bresson
Why is this important? The growth in wildlife and bird photography is helping mitigating for the losses in people observing or feeding birds. Photography is the engine that is propelling many toward nature in the 21st Century.
The next USFWS survey should be out next year. I am eager to see how the growth in wildlife photography is captured in the new report. The past five years have seen photography grow at an unprecedented rate. According to 1000memories, “Every 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s.”
There are over 350 million images posted to Facebook each day. What if only 1% of those images are related to nature? That’s still 3.5 million images being shared daily!
The rise of digital photography has breathed life into birding and wildlife observation. Photographers are doing much more than looking; photographers are chronicling. The ability to record and then instantly share what you see is a powerful influence in the ways that people are approaching nature.
People are sharing experiences with their images. There is an ad hoc interpretation taking place, one that is introducing swaths of our population to nature in new and credible ways. According to Neilsen, “Ninety-two percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.” What is a Facebook photo if not “earned media”? Look at the number of nature tour companies and destinations posting images in Facebook groups and other digital platforms. What could be a more perfect example of content marketing?
Consider this example. The Facebook page Texbirds focuses on rare birds seen in that state. The “rules on photos” from that page state that PHOTOS MUST SHOW SOMETHING, I.E. EARLY OR LATE SPECIES, UNUSUAL BEHAVIOR, UNUSUAL FOR LOCATION, ETC. PHOTOS JUST TO SHOW OF A PRETTY PHOTO ARE NOT ALLOWED. IF YOU JUST WANT TO SHOW OFF YOUR PRETTY PHOTOS PLEASE JOIN THE BIRDS OF TEXAS GROUP FOR THAT (their all caps, not mine). Texbirds has 3,604 members.
The Facebook group referenced in the above rules is Birds of Texas. Birds of Texas only requires that the photos be of Texas birds. Otherwise, any bird image is welcomed, no matter how common the bird. Birds of Texas has four times as many members as Texbirds (12,283). In fact, the Birds of Texas group, focused only on one state, has attracted twice as many members as the American Birding Association Facebook group (6,251 members) that covers the entire nation.
The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box…Henri Cartier-Bresson
I see no reason for this trend not to continue. As more affordable digital cameras suitable for nature photography are brought to the market (such as the Canon Powershot SX50 or SX60), the growth in nature photography will only accelerate. Demands for enhancements that are desired by photographers will only increase pressure on public land managers, as well.
The USFWS, the resource agency that manages the nation’s wildlife refuges, has traditionally dumped all wildlife observers, feeders, and photographers into one bucket. This is no longer appropriate or meaningful. The needs and desires of photographers are not necessarily the same as those of observers. The size of this recreational population (to over 12 million in 2011, and, even if the rate of 31% rate of growth has only remained constant) now totals over 16 million Americans. This segment of the wildlife recreation population has been relatively shy and hidden to date, but I doubt that this reticence will continue.
For interpreters, there needs to be a recognition that park, refuge, and museum staffs are not the only ones empowered to interpret these special places. Out of these 250 million images posted each day, how many were uploaded by interpretive staff? How can interpretive messages rise above the din? What if the messages from friends and family are considered more credible than those from official staff?
For those who have spent their lives promoting recreation as the primary vector that leads people to nature, this revolution in nature photography could not be more welcome. People are finding their ways to nature; they just aren’t following the traditional paths laid before them. Let’s hope that those agencies and institutions that are being confronted by this growth are prepared to nurture it to maturity.
It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators…Ansel Adams
Rio Grande Sunset by Ted Lee Eubanks
In 2011 I wrote an article for Birding magazine about bare-naked birding. The concept is simple.
That’s right; embrace “bare-naked” birding. Find a bird, gather as much information about its identity as possible without binoculars or field guides, hazard a guess as to its identity,then put glass to eye to confirm your guess. You will quickly become sensitized to the bird’s every aspect, by noting how it presents itself in life (not just the cartoonish field marks of field guides) and in the ways all aspects of a bird interrelate to form a living, breathing creature.
Ted Floyd, editor of Birding, has done yeoman’s work in promoting bare-naked birding, including completing the first bare-naked Big Day this spring in Colorado. Now the National Park Service has embraced this approach. Here is a link to the visitor’s guide for Big Bend National Park. Notice the section on page 8 about bare-naked birding and bird watching. The NPS had done a great job promoting the approach and explaining the concept, particularly for those who might be birding for the first time.
The lead story in the latest issue of the National Parks Conservation Association magazine describes birding Big Bend National Park by a first time birder. In the article the author embraces bare-naked birding, and explains how the approach helps with new birders. How nice to see a simple idea take hold!
Green Jay, Laguna Atascosa NWRFermata began working in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of South Texas in the early 1990s. Our first project involved developing the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail for Texas Parks and Wildlife in that area. We followed that work with the feasibility study for the World Birding Center, the strategic plan for the World Birding Center, nature tourism strategies for several of the communities there such as Mission, Weslaco, and South Padre, a feasibility study for the new centers at Weslaco and South Padre Island, and interpretive enhancements at Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen.
Early in our work we assessed the economic impacts of nature tourism in key LRGV sites such as Santa Ana NWR, Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park, and the Sabal Palms sanctuary near Brownsville. At that time (at least 15 years ago) we estimated an annual impact of $125 million from nature tourism in South Texas. A number of people were surprised by that figure, and questioned its accuracy. How could birders and other nature tourists contribute so much to that economy?
In recent months a study by Texas A&M has covered the same ground. This research comes after the implementation of much of the work listed above. Texas A&M now estimates that the impact is $300 million per year, almost three times our original estimate made prior to the community, state, and federal investments.
The communities there have been on board from the very beginning, and the results show the importance of their commitment and investments. Texas Parks and Wildlife has led the effort from the outset, and their investments (including two new state parks) have been invaluable. Congratulations to all involved in making South Texas a model for nature tourism development!
It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air –
and there, night came in.
When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography –
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.
Pablo Neruda
The American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) has reshuffled the birding world, and bird people are checking their lists to find the winners and losers, the splits and the lumps. The splitters have dominated for the past several years, and I see no overcoming their hegemony. Why complain? I gain a whip-poor-will and a wren without lifting the binocs.
Birders obsess over the typology of birds. I obsess over the typology of birders. For years I have tried to understand the diverse ways people approach nature through birds. I know; the word “birdwatcher” conjures visions of mossy pith helmets, khaki shorts framing pallid legs, and Miss Jane Hathaway. But there are over 80 million bird people, and surely not all are as geeky as the spoofs would imply. For God’s sake, Ian Fleming named his fictional spy (Bond, James Bond) after one of the bird people!
Who are these bird people? Let’s return to the National Survey of Recreation and the Environment (NSRE), the survey that cuts the broadest swath across the birding world. The NSRE asks the following questions in their telephone surveys of Americans 16 and older:
During the past 12 months, did you view, identify, or photograph birds outdoors?
Respondents that answered yes are then asked the following question:
On how many different days did you view, identify, or photograph birds outdoors?
A sample that the NSRE believes accurately reflects 81 million Americans answered yes to the first question. What astounds me is that anyone would answer no. What sentient human on this planet has not viewed a bird in the past 12 months, the visually impaired notwithstanding? How many people in this country have not seen or heard a bird today? I know, there are shut-ins for whom nature is shut out. But for the rest of us, just open the front door or the shades.
Let’s begin with the assumption that the NSRE respondents believed “view” to mean a concerted effort rather than incidental contact. If so, there are over 80 million Americans who have consciously approached nature through birds – the bird people. Within this amorphous mass there is a small segment we label as birdwatchers or birders. The vast majority are titleless. Most enjoy birds around the home, and may get no more advanced in skill than recognizing a chee-chee bird at the feeder.
Is this world of bird people so unfaceted, so simple as to be inhabited by a homogeneous people who only “view, identify, and photograph?” Enter typology. We know thousands of species of birds. What about the species of birders?
To develop a typology of bird people we must first strip away the obvious and look closely at how motivations are manifest in behavior. In other words, what are all of the ways that an interest in birds is reflected in how bird people act? What brings people to birds in the first place, and what keeps them engaged? Why do a few identify with the name “birder,” while most don’t?
I will start with the watchers. There are bird people who watch all birds, and collect their experiences in the form of a list. In the U.S., to list 700 species is considered a milestone accomplishment. There are watchers that have life lists, state lists, county lists, city lists, yard lists, and even feeder lists. Some bird people count the birds seen each year, and others try to see the most in a single day. Some count hawks, some shorebirds. Many watch at night, others from the deck of a boat (pelagics, whooping cranes, puffins). I have known people who kept a list of birds seen or heard while watching television and movies (surely you remember the kookaburras and peacocks echoing through Tarzan’s jungle).
Bird people join organizations and clubs, such as the National Audubon Society, the American Birding Association, state ornithological societies, and local bird clubs. Many join just to receive a magazine or newsletter. Each activity, event, organization, and periodical attracts an infinitesimally small fraction of the bird people. The bird people are the elephant in the bathtub, yet most serving them see only a leg, foot, or trunk.
There are bird people that watch but do not keep lists (I am one of the listless). Some try to place a name on every bird seen, while many are content to experience nature through birds without a need for further analysis or understanding. There are those who will spend thousands of dollars on equipment, and some are happy with a $25 pair of Tascos. I know accomplished bird people who carry nothing more than a dog-eared field guide and a pair of Army surplus binoculars, and incompetent birders who are well-adorned gear-heads. There are traditional bird people who rely on optics, and others who watch birds migrate with Doppler radar and track them by satellite. Many watch birds on their computers (feedercams, nestcams). Bird people watch owls and goat-suckers at night (and migrants crossing the full moon), and others record bird sounds with ARUs (Autonomous Recording Unit).
There are watchers who memorialize what they see in ways other than ticking a name off of a list. For example, there are bird people who photograph birds, digiscope birds, draw birds, paint birds, record bird songs, video birds, and keep notes and journals about bird sightings. Bird people then submit their notes and recordings of rarities to other bird people who serve on bird committees. Bird people maintain rare bird alerts, phone messages, and email lists such as Birdchat. There are a select few who devise new ways of identifying birds (ID Frontiers). There are bird people producing bird programs on radio, television, and video. There are even bird people movies such as Winged Migration, March of the Penguins, and the forthcoming Big Year.
There are bird people who express their watching experiences through art. Pablo Neruda wrote poems about watching birds. Salvidor Dali included a barn swallow in Still Life – Fast Moving, and crows were among Van Gogh’s final subjects in Wheat Field with Crows. Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker is perhaps his best writing, and of course Peter Matthiessen has written about birds and nature often during his splendid career. I find it heartening to know that Neruda, Dali, Van Gogh, Robbins, and Matthiessen are bird people too.
But bird people memorialized birds in art millennia before the impressionists. I have seen peacocks painted on the walls of Tao shrines in China, ocellated turkeys in Mayan glyphs, and a kingfisher exquisitely illustrated in a Hiroshige woodblock print. The Egyptians including cranes and falcons in their monuments, Native Americans carved owl faces in their rock art, and Australian aboriginals painted the extinct Genyornis on cave walls over 40,000 years ago.
Peacock painting, Weibao Mountain, Yunnan, China
Writers and artists describe and illustrate birds also as a way of educating and informing. Bird people write and illustrate identification guides (such as those by David Sibley, Kenn Kaufman, and National Geographic), organize bird trails, and create weblogs about birds and birding (such as Birdspert, and 10000 Birds). Yet within each of these subsets there are further divisions. We have yet to reach the atomic level of watching. For example, there are people who photograph from a blind, others who shoot from the window of their car, and some use high-speed flash. There are those who like to photograph birds on the wing, those who prefer the closest cropped view, and others, such as the Japanese, who photograph birds within a broader landscape.
There are bird painters who use water colors, and others who paint in oils. There are sketchers, illustrators, and print-makers and lithographers. There are painters who strive for realism, others for impression. People carve birds, mold birds, and cast birds. A few people paint only hummingbirds, others only ducks. In my Galveston home there are prints by Audubon, Gould, Fuertes, Peterson, John O’Neil, GM Sutton, Don Eckelberry, and Lars Jonnson. I am surrounded by bird people.
What about the bird-feeding bird people? Aren’t they watchers too (I doubt that many are feeding birds to fatten them up.)? There are gardeners for whom birds are a byproduct of the urban landscape. Many people are content to hang a couple of seed feeders from an eave, others manage intricate bird cafeterias with nectar, water, suet cakes, fruit, meal worms, wax worms, and various seeds and nuts on the menu. In the north people feed hummingbirds in the summer, and along the Gulf coast in the winter. Rather than install feeders, there are bird people who would rather cultivate native habitat around the yard, ranch, or farm to attract birds. Some install bird baths, others elaborate ponds. Some build bird houses, some buy and install the same (for bluebirds, for example), some people and even communities erect elaborate hotels for purple martins, and others construct artificial chimneys for swifts. Many of these feeder/garden/bird house people are organized. There is the Purple Martin Conservation Association, the Hummingbird Society, and ChimneySwifts.org. Some participate in Cornell’s Feeder Watch. Others subscribe to specialty magazines (Birds and Blooms and Bird Watchers’ Digest, for example).
Of course there are other bird people who supply the bird feeder people. There are bird people that manufacture (Droll Yankee feeders, Perky Pet), retailers (Duncraft, Wild Birds Unlimited), and websites (The Backyard Bird Company, JustBirdHouses, and BirdWatcher Supply Company). At backyardbird.com, you can order a bird house with your favorite NFL team’s insignia emblazoned on the front. Big Pockets provides clothing for birders, and Nikon, Swarovski, and Bushnell are among the optic manufacturers. Google the words “birdwatching supply” and see the reach of the market. Non-profit nature centers sell birding stuff, CLO sells birding stuff, Walmart sells birding stuff, National Geographic sells birding stuff, and ABA sells birding stuff.
There are bird people who offer services to other bird people. There are bird lodges (Pico Bonito in Honduras, Asa Wright in Trinidad, and O’Reilly’s in Australia are among my favorites), and bird guide companies that will take you to them (Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, Wings, and Field Guides, for example). There are bird tourism agencies and staff, marketing bird experiences such as the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway in Kansas or the World Birding Centers in South Texas. There are companies, such as Fermata, that help bird companies connect with other bird people.
Bird companies are bird people too.
Then there are the people who hunt birds. Of course all intentionally view birds as well, even if only down the barrel of a shotgun. There are bird hunters who stalk upland birds such as pheasant and quail, and others who find pleasure in freezing in a duck blind. There are bird people who hunt cranes, rails, snipe, and woodcock. Some hunters are after dove in the fall, others turkey in the spring. Some use dogs, others master bird calls. Bird hunters have not only separate interests but separate organizations as well, such as Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, Quail Unlimited, the Ruffed Grouse Society, and the National Wild Turkey Federation. If a hunter responds affirmatively to the NSRE survey, he (hunters are predominantly male) becomes one of the bird people as well.
These types of hunting are legal and controlled. Other types are not. There are kids killing yard birds with pellet guns. In many countries (such as Mexico), there are bird people who make their living by trapping and selling caged birds. Many of the trappers know precisely the names and habits of the birds they capture. Are these bird people too? Aren’t they intentionally viewing?
Bird people express, watch, feed, and hunt. They also study and teach. There are scientists for whom birds are the primary subject (ornithologists), and others for whom birds are indicators (ecologists, for example). There are universities such as LSU and Cornell with renowned schools of ornithology. There are bird educators, both formal and informal. Bird people lead field trips, conduct seminars, and speak at gatherings of other bird people. There are bird education organizations such as the Bird Education Network, Flying WILD, and Cornell’s Project Urban Bird. Bird people band birds during migration, at night (like owls at Whitefish Point), some for research, and others to ring and fling. A few collect birds as specimens, others collect birds as points of data.
Banding northern saw-whet owls at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory
There are bird scientists who study bird conservation, and others who manage conservation in the field. There are game and nongame bird biologists. There are professional bird students, and nonprofessional bird teachers. I know bird people who inventory proposed sites for wind power development, and others who study endangered species threatened by oil spills. In recent years many bird people have become involved with identifying important bird areas (IBAs), and compiling breeding bird atlases. There are bird laboratories and bird observatories, with some specializing in research (Point Reyes and Powermill), some in education (Black Swamp, Cape May), and others in conservation (Gulf Coast Bird Observatory).
Bird people are also in the public’s eye. Two former presidents were (and are) bird people – Theodore Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter. As a young man Roosevelt even toyed with becoming a biologist, and he kept a detailed list of all the birds he saw on the White House grounds during his presidency. The brief movie below is from the 1915 trip to Breton Island (LA) by Roosevelt, the only one of his refuges he personally visited. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are bird people as well. In 1948 Whittaker Chambers tripped alleged spy Alger Hiss with a prothonotary warbler. Count Jane Alexander, George Plimpton, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming among the bird people too.
Bird people are also in the public’s eye. Two former presidents were (and are) bird people: Theodore Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter. As a young man Roosevelt even toyed with becoming a biologist, and he kept a detailed list of all the birds he saw on the White House grounds during his presidency. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are bird people as well. In 1948 Whittaker Chambers tripped alleged spy Alger Hiss with a prothonotary warbler. Count Jane Alexander, George Plimpton, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming among the bird people too.
I have even known bird people named for birds (names either by their parents or later changed; I’m not asking.). I know a cerulean (Susan, one of the creators of the Great Florida Birding Trails), a shearwater (Deborah, whose company guides people to see pelagic species such as shearwaters), and a mallard (Larry, who managed wildlife refuges in Arkansas when I knew him). The former president of the National Audubon Society is John Flicker, and the current chairman of the board is Holt Thrasher.
Bird conservation groups work at the state level (Mass Audubon, New Jersey Audubon), and some locally (such as the Houston Audubon Society and Hawk Mountain). Federal and state agencies promote bird conservation, manage bird refuges and sanctuaries, and enforce bird conservation laws and treaties. Cities such as Houston, Chicago, and Philadelphia have signed the Urban Conservation Treaty for Migratory Birds. I have known staff from bird organizations that eagerly raised funds for birds they knew nothing about. I have known crusaders that would slip in the name of an endangered bird at the drop of a hat if it bolstered their argument. And I have known many, many bird people who blithely ignored the bush with the bird.
Who are the bird people? All of this, and more.
Birdwatching is a Victorian pastime that overnight morphed into a 21st Century recreation – birding. Birding has the flexibility to allow each person to fit the interest to themselves. The constraints that once limited birding (where to go, what to see) have been shattered by technology. Along with the transformation of watching, other aspects have been fundamentally altered. When I began birding scientists were still arguing whether or not birds migrated across the Gulf of Mexico. Now we can watch them on Doppler from the comforts of our living room. As as kid we bought striped sunflower seed (the only type available) at the feed store. Now I go to Wildbirds Unlimited and have access to every type of seed, feeder, and accoutrement I can imagine. Birds and their watching have become a big business, fueled by the growing appetite of the bird people.
Birds bind people together. No human being aware of their surroundings has lived absent birds. Birds offer a lingua franca for describing nature, and a portal for approaching the world outdoors. No matter how divergent our evolution, we all converge upon a notion expressed so sublimely by bird person (and Nobel Laureate) Pablo Neruda:
Pablo Neruda
A people’s poet,
provincial and birder,
I’ve wandered the world in search of life,
bird by bird I’ve come to know the earth.
A bird person may live next door, date your daughter, or drink a beer with you after work. You won’t know. Bird people are anonymous and invisible, remaining transparent unless outed by their binoculars, bird feeders, or the I Brake for Birds! sticker on the Isuzu in the driveway. Bird people are everywhere yet nowhere. Bird people are everyone yet no one.
I am a bird person.
To know more about bird people, let’s begin with a definition of who they are or aren’t. Simply put, bird people find their way to nature through wild birds. We feed birds, garden for birds, photograph birds, and watch birds. We collect bird books, photographs, and sounds, and some of us collect the names of the birds we have seen on a list.
Except for the shared interest in birds, little else is common among bird people. Although we number in the tens of millions, we are not a cohesive, delineated group. While other recreations have sharp edges and defined borders (you become a hunter the day your dad buys you a gun and a license), there is no single act that welcomes you to our bird fraternity. Our recreation is amorphous, porous, and pliable. Each bird person negotiates an individual relationship with both the resource and the recreation.
Bird people congregating at Scouts' Woods during a fallout
We count hunters and anglers by licenses sold. How do we count bird people? Poorly, I am afraid. The most commonly quoted survey is from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) titled Birding in the United States: A Demographic and Economic Analysis. According to the agency, in 2006 there were 48 million people in the U.S. age 16 or older who watched, fed, and/or photographed birds. Relatively equal numbers of men (46%) and women (54%) participated. Almost 42 million watched, fed, and photographed birds around the home, with around 20 million traveling away from home to enjoy birds (an increase of 8% over the 2001 survey).
The USFWS uses a conservative approach by limiting the survey. The agency is interested only in those who either closely observe birds around the home, or who take trips more than one mile from home for the primary purpose of watching, feeding, or photographing birds. Incidentally seeing a hummingbird while mowing the yard is not considered “watching.” Even so, this definition of bird people encompasses 21% of the American population, or 1 out of every 5 Americans. For comparison, the PGA estimates that there are 27 million golfers in the U.S., marginally over half of those who find their way to nature through birds rather than birdies.
The USFWS is not the only organization counting bird people. The most conservative (i.e., lowest) estimates are from the Outdoor Industry Association and their Outdoor Recreation Participation Report. According to the OIA and its Outdoor Foundation, 14.4 million American watched birds more than 1/4 mile away from home or a vehicle in 2008. In the same year over 24 million Americans watched wildlife away from home and car.
The USFWS counts both home and away from home watching, so the discrepancy in estimates is obvious. Yet I am comfortable with the USFWS 20 million watching birds away from home compared to the OIA 14.4 million. When counting bird people, close is as good as it gets.
Crane viewers, Platte River, Nebraska
Finally we have the National Survey of Recreation and the Environment (NSRE) to consider. I have worked with this survey for years, and I am comfortable with what it can and cannot provide. The NSRE offers the broadest view of recreation, and therefore I believe that their estimates are most accurate in delineating the softest edges of a given recreation. According to the NSRE, there are over 81 million American who watch birds, no matter how casually. Rather than considering this an estimate of a defined population, I would prefer treating this more as a potential. I do not believe that the vast majority of these 81 million Americans consider themselves to be birders or birdwatchers, but nevertheless they are finding their way to nature (no matter how circuitous the route) through birds.
Let’s summarize. There are over 80 million bird people in the U.S., according to the NSRE. Around 40 million closely watch, feed, and photograph birds around their homes, and between 15 and 20 million travel away from home to see birds. In addition, the three surveys show this to be a growing population. The bird people are on the move.
Why does this matter? For many of us, it doesn’t. But for those who are interested in organizing, marketing to, or understanding bird people, the numbers matter. Here is an example (carried forward from my most recent article on the American Birding Association). Currently the ABA has around 14 thousand members. Using the most conservative estimate (the OIA), this membership represents around a tenth of a percent of the traveling bird people in the nation. That’s right; one tenth of one percent! With 350 thousand members, the National Audubon Society does no better than 2.5% and these members are hardly all attracted to Audubon by birds. In both cases, memberships have been declining. How is it that bird people are growing while bird groups are shrinking?
Bird people are not just birders or birdwatchers. Bird people are diverse, and their interests diverge after the initial attraction to birds. ABA and Audubon have lost sight of the bird people, and have remained content to carve out what each has believed to be a competitive niche. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (CLO) took a different tack with eBird, and the results have been (in my opinion) spectacular. Evolution has both winners and losers.
In the case of the ABA, their niche (the most avid of the birders) has evolved at a more pronounced rate than the group itself. The ABA is an eight-track tape, and the niche is buying iPods. Though ABA has toyed with new technologies (PEEPS and Ted Floyd’s use of Twitter), the organization’s leadership still views the recreation through tired, old eyes. Compounding the problem is that ABA is offering potential members less than in the past, and the little that is being provided is dated. Why should anyone be surprised that members are slipping away?
Economics 101 – if your market is growing, and your share is shrinking, you change. The alternatives are to close shop, or to be content with diminishing market share. I have no idea what will happen with ABA (or Audubon, for that matter), but both have fairly simple choices to make. The numbers are real, and the bird people are on the march.
