Word: birding
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...estimated 600,000 guides are sold each year in the U.S., and Roger Tory Peterson's classic Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America, first published in 1934, has topped 3.5 million in sales. Birders account for most of the $14 billion spent annually on the appreciation of wildlife. That includes binoculars, spotting scopes, cameras, records and tapes of bird sounds, computerized software for keeping bird lists, and bird tours that reach any corner of the world, from Siberia and Mongolia (23 days, $3,595 from Wings, Inc.) to Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion (25 days...
Normally a birder starts in the backyard or a nearby wood, sees all the local birds, then graduates to more and more travel in search of new species. Next come vacations in the states with the most birds (California, Texas and Florida), followed by forays onto the big-time birding circuit: southeast Arizona for Mexican specialties, the Dry Tortugas for noddies and boobies, Alaska for arctic and Asian species. The final step is the long trip to see a single bird: Michigan for Kirtland's warbler, Calcasieu County in Louisiana for the black francolin, a grueling five-mile trek...
High-level birding requires hunting skills such as tracking ability and a knowledge of habitat and weather, plus a knowledge of bird behavior, sounds, plumages and the pattern of small clues, sometimes called jizz, that can even reveal the identity of a distant, backlighted bird...
...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...
...Though birding is a hobby, watchers are quickly drawn toward environmental issues. DDT nearly wiped out the osprey and the peregrine falcon. On April 19, the last California condor was taken from the wild. "We have to convert interest in birds into backing for conservation," says Arnold Brown of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. "It's one thing to admire a loon and another to realize that it's our oldest bird, 70 million years old, and in trouble from acid rain...