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How Bird Watching Has Taken Off In Britain |
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Sunday, 22 November 2009 |
Birdwatching – when it is non-birdwatchers you are talking to – produces an almost uniform reaction: amused condescension, as if the sheer harmlessness of the activity were dangerous or put it beyond the pale as a subject.
It's the received idea of the "twitcher", the bird boffin (not, as the birding fraternity point out, to be confused with the less obsessive "birder"), that is the turn-off. And the gentle image of a leisurely older population in green anoraks does little to help, suggesting birdwatching as shorthand for retirement, evoking a life in which birds have flown as a substitute for more urgent human dramas.
But these prejudices are due an overhaul. For the news is that on the quiet there has been a birdwatching revolution. A recent survey by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) spells it out: six million Britons now enjoy birdwatching every couple of weeks. And membership of the RSPB now exceeds one million (a figure that has doubled within a decade).
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