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bird-watching, the observation of live birds in their natural habitat, a popular pastime and scientific sport that has developed almost entirely in the 20th century. In the 19th century almost all students of birds used guns and could identify an unfamiliar species only when its corpse was in their hands. Modern bird- watching was made possible largely by the development of optical aids, particulariy binoculars, which enabled people to see and study wild birds, without harming them, better than ever before.
A great surge of interest in wild birds occurred from about the 1 880s onward. Bird- watching first became popular in Great Britain, with the United States not far behind. Eventually, it became almost equally popular in Scandinavia, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and the older countries of the British Commonwealth,
Interest in bird-watching has been stimulated by bird books, stretching as far back as Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne (1788) and John James Audubon’s illustrated Birds of America (1827—38) and culminating in such essential aids to the bird watcher in the field as H.F. Witherby’s five-volume Handbook of British Birds (1938—41) and Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds (1947), which gives the field marks of all North American birds found east of the Rocky Mountains. Similar works are available for many other regions.
Journals and magazines, such as the Audubon Magazine (United States), British Birds (England), and La Terre et Ia vie (France), have also contributed to the growth of interest, as have the broadcasting media.
One of the great appeals of bird-watching is that it is a relatively inexpensive activity. Basic equipment includes binoculars, a field book to aid identification, and a notebook for recording time and place of sightings; it is not necessary to travel. Many bird watchers set up feeding stations to attract birds.
These may range from a simple tray fastened to a window sill to elaborate manufactured structures with separate compartments for different kinds of feed, Suet sticks hung from trees, feed scattered on the ground, and birdbaths serve a similar purpose. The lists of bird observations compiled by members of local bird-watching societies are very useful to scientists in determining dispersal, habitat, and migration patterns of the various species.
From about 1930 there was a great increase in fieldwork, including photography, by amateur bird watchers. The British Trust for Ornithology organizes cooperative inquiries, such as sample censuses of herons and great crested grebes and surveys of winter roosts of gulls, in which large numbers of amateurs take part. The wildfowl counts of the International Wildfowl Research Bureau are run as a coordinated international effort throughout western Europe.
Bird observatories originated as far back as the 1 840s, when the German ornithologist Heinrich Gbtke began to record the vast num
bersof migrant birds that pass every spring and autumn through the island of Helgoland in the North Sea. The main activity at bird observatories became the trapping and subsequent ringing (banding) of birds. Birdbanders are usually licensed by a central national wildlife organization to which they report their findings. Side by side with the actual watching of birds, a strong movement grew up to protect birds and other wildlife by legislation and public understanding. The lead was taken in the United States by the National Audubon Society and in Britain by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The International Council for the Preservation of Birds was formed in London in 1963.
International ornithological congresses, held since 1884, are attended by several hundred amateur bird watchers as well as by professional ornithologists.
