There's thousands of birders out there, most countries have a growing birding community. Birding itself, but also social media enables us to get in touch with other bird enthusiasts all around the world. While, of course every person is unique there's just some types of people you keep bouncing into again and again.
Here's my attempt to summarise these different types of birders. Rather than being just one type of birder, most of us are probably a combination of different types.
Don't take them too seriously ;)
The ‘nature lover’
You don’t know much about animals, but you enjoy watching
the occasional nature documentary. Cat memes are the best, but that knife-carryingankle-monitor crow is funny as hell too! Did you hear about that Mandarin Duckin Central Park? Crazy, how nature does that, right?!
The amateur birdwatcher
You enjoy the tits/chickadees that turn up at the feeder in
your garden. Occasionally you’ll recognise a Mallard or Blackbird while
strolling through the park. You feel extremely proud, when you can identify that
Jay in the picture that your Facebook friend shared. You (kinda) have a social
life outside of birds and birding. Oh look, a Canadian Goose!
The amateur birder
Your biology teacher got you hooked on birding a few months
ago. You now know that the term Seagull is pretty meaningless, but other than
big gull and small gull you still don’t quite understand how to distinguish
them all. Whenever you hear about a nature walk you always try to join in and learn
about birds. You spent about as much time with your peers as with senior
citizens now, who seem to own nothing but khaki clothes. Even though you’ve
just entered the Birding universe, you somehow feel as if you already know just
as much about birds as them.
The rising star
You get to know other birders around your age or
middle-aged. Their knowledge seems incredible and to keep up with them you
delve into all the field guides that cross your path! One day you’ll be that
person that you’re looking up to at the moment and one day you’ll definitely be
the one to find that rare warbler! If only they didn’t look all the same.
While your life list is growing very steadily, the number of
people you associate with shrinks just as steadily. At least, they all share
your interest. Being around non-birders starts to bore you death. Who the hell
would want to visit the Empire State Building, when a Saw-whet Owl was recently reported on eBird from Central Park? Oh, and that ‘Seagull’ that just flew
overhead was a Herring Gull! How could people not know that?
The generalist
During one of the bird walks, which you now regularly lead,
there was this herper guy who seemed to be equally as knowledgeable about his
critters as you are about birds. Some of your Facebook friends always share
those awesome macro pictures of insects. And you recently met this incredibly
cute girl, who’s into plants. Weird flex, but ok…
You notice that there’s just so much more to observe than only
birds. Also you enjoy that cool sensation of discovering a whole new world, a
similar feeling to when you first got involved in birding. There’s just soooo
much out there and you want to learn EVERYTHING about every living organism
(except maybe plants – they’re boring).
The specialist
The more you immerge into the world of birding, the more you
sense that your fulfilment lies within e.g. Seawatching. That feeling of acknowledgement
that you received, when you correctly called out the Long-tailed Jaeger first,
it just fills you with pride. And you know that that respect is genuine, as you
feel similar towards your friend who has become an expert in flight-call
identification and you love your other friend who spends his life studying
penguins in the Antarctic. But not gull-watchers, those are just weird!
The photographer
Your favourite magazine has always been National Geographic
and one day you’ll publish there too! Until then you’ll have to distribute your
pictures through Instagram and Facebook and get exposure. At least some of the
local Birding magazines have noticed your talent.
While many birders feel as if you aren’t one of them,
because you don’t enjoy driving to landfills in winter as much as they do, you wonder
how many of them have already had encounters with waders at arms-length
distance or an eagle sitting at eye-level right in front of them. And as soon
as you get those full-frame pics of that rare Bunting they all come around to
praise your ass.
The sound-recorder
Yeah, pictures are great, but the beauty in birds lies
within their songs and calls! You always leave the house at ungodly hours in
the night to catch that predawn chorus without any human-induced background
noises and you carry your self-build parabolic reflector with you. After you
return from an exhaustive birding trip around 10AM you listen to the recordings
that the stationary microphone on your roof made of nocturnally migrating
birds.
Your superior sound identification skills are quite likely the
reason, why your team got into first place during the last Big Day.
The local
You go birding in the same patch every day and you have thus
become the leading international expert for your local swamp. You don’t only
know all the other birders, who visit more or less regularly, but the local
birds always come to greet you personally. Nobody has seen more species of
birds (and other wildlife) in your patch than you, no one ever has before and no
one ever will, but that’s not your main concern, as you won’t rest until the local
birds have decided to accept them as one of their own.
The tourist
The birds in your country are cool, no doubt, but the birds
in the tropics are even cooler. So are the birds in high mountain ranges or in
the Frigid Zone. It’s just way cooler to watch those thousands of alcids in
their breeding range or listen to the roars of a lion, while watching
Paradise-Whydahs display, than to stay home and watch the same birds, that you’ve
seen about a trillion times before and to hope for a slightly unusual bird
amongst them. There’s over ten thousand bird species out there, waiting to be shownto you by a guide.
The adventurer
Everybody loves travelling, but they all seem to stay on the
beaten path. You’re different: You don’t want some tour guide to show you the
same bird that has been shown to hundreds of other travelling birders before.
You want to find it on your own, through a mixture of research, expertise,
endurance and luck. People like you are the original ornithologists, those who
dig up the gold. You’ll be the one to rediscover Kinglet Calyptura. You’re not
afraid of getting lost in the impenetrable Fakfak Mountains and would stay a
month in the high arctic during winter if it meant you would finally get your
lifer Ross’s Gull. People better not get attached to you, who knows if you’ll
return from your next trip to the war-zones of Congoon your search for Congo Peacock. Admit it, those darn
birds have made you go totally crazy.
The searcher
You’re kind of like the adventurer, except on a budget.
Nothing fulfils you more than finding a rare bird on your own. You’ll scan
through thousands of Geese in search of the one that doesn’t belong. You know
how to distinguish any rare gull from any even rarer gull and you know the
flight calls of passerines that have never even been recorded in your country. One
day you’ll find that national first. Until then, your social life will have to
wait. Probably even after that, who the hell could find those rarities, if not
you?!
The hardcore twitcher
The second your phone vibrates you’re already sitting in
your car and driving to the airport, to fly to an uninhabited island, where
some lucky bastard (maybe an undiscovered birding god?) just found a Belted
Kingfisher. When you hear, that it has relocated to the island nearby, you are
the one to talk one of the local fishermen to take you and your birding pals over
there. Congratulations, you’ve now seen your 526th species for the
country, while you could have added about 100 species to your lifelist for the
same money spent.
The ornithologist-researcher
You’re not really a birder (sensu stricto), but your research revolves around ornithological
matters (sensu lato), which is why
you enjoy the occasional bird(watch)ing tour with your birder colleagues. Your
paper about the post-breeding mating behaviour of moribund Common Murres (Uria aalge, PONTOPPIDAN 1763) was
ground-breaking, but for some reasons it’s hard for you to get research grants.
The birder-researcher
You might have a scientific background, but your research
for birding papers is mostly done during your free-time. You enjoy travelling
to garbage dumps in the Mongolian desert to study the intricate wing-patterns of
second-cycle gulls that might, possibly, one day turn up as a vagrant in your home country
or you research all the sightings of vagrant Belted Kingfishers to theNetherlands (n=1). Apart from you, only about ten gull-watchers in the world understood
and memorized the differences in the wing-patterns between Mongolian Gull and Vega Gull or hundreds of birders start looking for an ultra-rare vagrant Belted Kingfishers, which might not bear any biological significance, but its hella fun (and will raise your status in the birding community)!
The expert
After about 50 years of birding you’ve seen everything out
there that Mother Nature could possibly think of. You’ve seen triple hybrids,
10 colour variations of a species that doesn’t even have different morphs and you’ve
heard birds imitate other birds that live on the other side of world. You’ve
come to the conclusion that biology is just one huge mess and that the term
Seagull may in fact be appropriate. You receive about a dozen mails daily,
asking you to identify a domestic-type Mallard and the press asks your opinion
on matters such as invasive species, feral cats and Mandarin Ducks in Central
Park. Nobody seems to care about your answers though, as everybody has already
made their minds beforehand.
The wannabe-expert
After about 50 years of birding you’ve identified abouteverything out there that Mother Nature could possibly think of to subspecies
level. You give your opinion on identification environmental matters, even when no one asked
and call everyone who disagrees an idiot. If asked for sources for your claims
your favourite answer is ‘common sense’ or another similar, and very scientific, method.
What type of birder are you? Which types did I miss?
Write it in the comments below!
