More Birders And Technology Changed Birding

When I first became interested in birding I was able to reach out to birding clubs and other birders to get advice on how to go about becoming a birder. At that time I would hear about things like making sketches of rare birds so that you would have evidence of what you've seen. If you wanted to photograph them you needed and SLR camera with a long lens which was outside of the price range of most new birders. Then they started manufacturing superzoom cameras for just a few hundred bucks. They don't usually produce the results you can get with the SLR but sketching birds became the art of the few as cameras area lot easier. 

I was finally able to find my first Black-backed Woodpecker by calling the head of an Audubon chapter in Vermont who was kind enough to give me great advice on where to look for them. They like partially burned forests of a certain type of tree and eat specific types of beetles. That was a lot of fun to finally track them down.

A good old fashioned book told me where to look for Gray Jays. They call them Canada Jays now. These birds were known to be super tolerant of humans. That was a long time ago though. Maybe they've grown tired of us by now?

I think I found out about this Fork-tailed Flycatcher through a list server. I don't believe eBird was around at that time or at least I wasn't aware of it.

Between eBird and Merlin you can get instant alerts about where rare birds are, have your phone identify them by sound, and send photos  for instant verification. It also records bird songs for you so that you can gather evidence of your sighting. This has supercharged the birding game helping birders quickly accumulate large lists of species in a short amount of time. Of course, you still have to be out there and active to do this. I think these advances in technology has made the sport/hobby/science of birding more popular than ever before. People being stuck home during covid further increased the number of new people interested in birding. 

I think all the newer technology has helped draw in a lot of new younger birders as well.

Back in the "old days" birders will tell you about how they had telephone chain calls to get the word out about a rare bird sighting. You tell a birding friend then they call a birding friend and so on. You had to rely on things like field guides and tape recorders to identify birds. Some of the old timers still do it that way. I'm stuck somewhere in between. I use some technology but I miss some of those old ways. The Black-necked Stilt and Roseate Spoonbill in photos 4 and 5 reported to me by phone by a fellow birder (although it was actually a text). 

Seeing rare birds is nice but find them through pure serendipity might be the most rewarding way. I found my first Sandhill Cranes strictly by chance while out on a walk. 

This American White Pelican flew right over my backyard while I was cutting the grass! In most cases rare bird is a relative term. The birds I posted here are rare to me but may be common in other places.