Word: birder
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Most birding zealots are at a loss to explain this lavish expenditure of time and energy. "It's just something I have to do," says Richard Turner, a professor of fine arts at New York University, falling into the familiar language of helplessness that marks the committed birder. The backyard and occasional fanciers should consider themselves lucky, according to Pete Dunne of the New Jersey Audubon Society. "Those people are still in control of their lives," he says. "For the rest of us, birding controls us. We're addicts...
...single bird may produce more than a dozen different songs and calls, and plumage may vary widely by sex, age, region and season. Even if a species is seen for only a second, a top birder can sift through all the clues and come up with the right identification most of the time. "In part, birding is a mental challenge," says Dunne. "It attracts a disproportionate number of doctors and engineers -- people whose jobs involve the same kind of deductive reasoning birders...
...Many birders get started in their preteen years. "They may get wide-eyed seeing their first 'Baltimore' oriole," says Turner, a birder since age six. "That aesthetic component gets mixed quickly with the urge to collect -- the baseball-card factor -- and the hunting instinct, which is probably in the genes...
...some watchers are dedicated nonactivists who enjoy birding largely for the companionship it brings. A birder can travel a thousand miles into the wilds of another state and find instant rapport with local birding fanatics, who are busy collecting new species, along with mosquito bites and ticks. "Camaraderie is what birding is all about," says Benton Basham, a Chattanooga, Tenn., anesthetist...
Like other addicts, birders can let their work slip. Don Roberson, a well- known California birder, dropped his law practice at the age of 29 to follow the birds, though he has since relapsed and returned to work. Like ski bums, some talented young birders take low-level jobs as clerks or night watchmen, thus saving their major energies for the chase...