Why Birding?
Or maybe a title more to the point would be something like, Why not squirreling? Sure squirrels are rodents and they’re everywhere. But just look at this picture below. The subject is as good, if not better, than any bird picture that I’ve ever taken. The photo magnifies an otherwise relatively tiny world, giving us details that may escape the notice of the naked eye. Check out the coloration on the tail, just above his haunches, and around his eyes; look at his tiny finger-like paws gripping the nut, while his hind paws balance him on the branch. This photo was even more difficult to capture than sitting on a boardwalk twenty yards away from a placid merganser minding its own business in the middle of a half-frozen pond.
He asked me why no one spends thousands of dollars on equipment to photograph him. I told him I didn’t know, and snapped his picture.
So why is it then that birds have engendered the creation of a world-wide hobby, with huge amounts of resources and reference materials? I would argue that the main motivator is the fact that, for many in the developed world, where birding is undeniably most highly concentrated, the wilderness and wild animals are a thing of our species’ past. We currently live in an ecosystem outside of and separate from the world of the animals, so if we wish to penetrate that foreign ecosystem and become familiar with it on the weekends, birds are the most common, yet diverse, citizens of that world. If you go for a walk in a park, you are guaranteed to see a dozen species of birds (if you’re paying attention, and if you know what you’re looking for), while on the other hand you are very unlikely to see any wildlife bigger or more diverse than this squirrel.
If you were an beaver-er (?), you could go to Huntley Meadow Park, see the massive beaver dam, see the muddy footprints of your quarry on the boardwalk, but the crowds would soon drive the beaver back to its home.
Tiny beaver prints.
So the etiology of birding as a hobby, I would posit, is in the ubiquity of birds. It is hard to go anywhere without seeing a bird of some sort, and this will rouse the curiosity of anyone so inclined, and from there the hook is in.