Ive been to many a country or city home, lodge, B&B as well as grey
nomads and travellers etc who have a field guide in their collection
or in the car. Many people would not call themselves birdwatchers or
twitchers but would still have an interest in the birds that visit or
reside on their property or they may encounter in their travels.
Mind you the twitchers amongst us have multiple copies!
Just looking my Australian field guides they include
Morcombe,
Morcombe compact
Simpson and Day (two editions)
Knight and Pizzey
Slaters ( two editions)
Cayleys
Leach
Flegg
cheers
David Taylor
On 17/02/2007, at 10:51 AM, Trevor Hampel wrote:
Sean Dooley wrote:
But then again, my 1999 edition of Pizzey and Knight states on the
cover
that 40,000 copies had been sold. So unless people bought multiple
copies or
30,000 visiting overseas birders bought it, the actual figure may
be higher
than my 10,000 estimate.
Hi Sean and other dedicated birders,
Quoting sales figures of popular field guides and bird books gives
a truer indication of the broader interest in birds than just
membership of clubs and organisations. I suspect that the interest
in the beauty and sometimes the unusual behaviour of birds in parks
and gardens is far bigger than we think. For everyone who purchases
a bird book, there would have to be another nine who are "bird
lovers" or "bird observers" who would not identify with the term
"birder" or belong to any club and not even buy a book about birds.
Sean's comments made me do a quick summary of my friends,
acquaintances and family and I had no trouble coming up with thirty
names of people I know who observe birds from time to time. They
all know I am a birder and will comment to me on birds they have
seen, or bird behaviour they have observed. I often get emails or
phone calls asking for help with identification.
So for every person who identifies with the title "Birder" or "Bird-
watcher" there could well be 30-40 people who occasionally observe
birds in their daily lives, especially in gardens but who would not
call themselves a birder as such. These people rarely keep any
formal records of their observations.
Here is a huge, untapped potential membership for our birding
organisations. I suspect that the membership fees are too
prohibitive for those on the fringe. It could be as simple as not
being a priority.
From my own experience in blogging about Australian birds (see link
below) over the last 18 months I would estimate that about 90 per
cent of people commenting on my articles would not call themselves
birders, but who are interested in birds ie they are "bird lovers".
Then you have another group who are looking for information or
help because they have had a close encounter with birds in their
garden.
In summary then, I suspect that the true number of Australians who
identify themselves as "birders" would be somewhere between ten and
twenty thousand but the number of people who are aware of our birds
and take a casual interest in them could well exceed 200,000. This
is an untapped resource for programmes such as the Atlas and Birds
in Backyards.
--
Trevor Hampel
Murray Bridge
South Australia
Check out my BLOGS (web logs):
Trevor's Birding - observations and photos of birds at http://
www.trevorsbirding.com
Trevor's Travels - travels in Australia, Thailand and Nepal at
http://www.trevorstravels.com
Trevor's Writing - read some of my writing at http://
www.trevorhampel.com
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