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Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival November 12 - 16, 2003 in Brevard County, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife. |
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Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival November 12 - 16, 2003 in Brevard County, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife. |
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My first book, published in 1990, was called A Field Guide to Advanced Birding. Intended for the experienced bird watcher, it gave detailed information on how to recognize the most challenging birds. Ten years and three books later, I had another field guide published. This one was not so advanced: called Kaufman Focus Guides: Birds of North America, it was aimed at newcomers to bird watching, intended to make the first steps as easy as possible.
At the time, some of my acquaintances suggested that I was moving backwards, or that it was a comedown for me to write a basic-beginners' guide instead of doing an even-more-advanced one. The following is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for Bird Watcher's Digest about the reasoning behind the Focus Guide.
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One of the great things about bird watching is that it can be enjoyed at many different levels. Even if you devote years of concentration to birds, as I have, you can still find absorbing challenges in the most difficult identifications. At the other extreme, you can go out just a few times per year and have fun figuring out a few more of your local birds each time.
Is one of these levels "better" than another? Of course not. I firmly believe that birding is something that we do for enjoyment -- so if you enjoy it, you're automatically a good birder, regardless of how many species you can identify.
Unfortunately, some serious birders can't see it that way. They'll insist that every beginner should start off with an "advanced" bird guide, so that they'll develop into experts more rapidly. But here's some news: the typical beginner -- the one who makes up 99.9 per cent of the bird watching public -- has other interests besides birds, and other demands on his/her time, and will never be able to devote a lot of time to developing their skill. The typical beginner will never become an expert, AND THERE IS NO REASON WHY THEY SHOULD. The purpose of a standard field guide is NOT to turn beginners into experts, but rather to help people enjoy birds. Seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? But sometimes the experienced birders need to be reminded that people have the right to just go birding for fun.
Why, after being a "serious" birder all my life, have I come to care so much about beginners? It's simple. Bird habitats are now facing monumental threats. Birds and nature need all the friends they can get. We don't necessarily need more people who can discuss the tertial patterns of second-winter Thayer's Gulls, but we do need more people who have maybe identified a Yellow Warbler and who know there's some connection between birds and habitat. I'd like to get tons of people to the stage of knowing and appreciating some of the birds they see. If a few of them go on to become experts, that's fine, but it's not the most important thing.
Anyone who cares about conservation and about the future survival of birds should want the birding world to be as open and welcoming and inclusive as possible. Personally, I'd like to reach out to every man, woman, and child in North America, and say, "Come on, let's go birding!"
