Birding: A Most Gratifying Avocation

My brother belongs to a strange lot known as birders. Together with his three buddies who are likewise into the hobby of birding, they march laboriously on landfills, hike through tracts of wooded land, and even roam about in cemeteries, each of them armed with a binocular, a digital camera, crackers, and water. One of them carries a telescope which comes in handy in case they want to take a look at a bird up close.

Understandably, their clothing is light, their shoes designed for comfort, and they never fail to bring with them hats. Moving at a deliberately slow pace, they go in search of birds. And, yes, they carry a field guide - an illustrated manual for identifying birds.

It is interesting to note how my brother and his co-birders go through their avocation: First, they look for a bird (either with the naked eye or with the use of their binoculars); when they spot one, they identify it; they then jot it down in their log. In case they are unable to determine the bird's identity, they search for it in the field guide. If the bird is not in the handbook, they take down notes, make a rough drawing representing the chief features of the bird, or even take a picture of it to be used as a future reference.

One of those in my brother's group is really a beginner and therefore he takes advantage of the others' expertise by being with them in their every trek. Some beginners who are able to bear the cost of a guide hire one.

There is a wide range of birding instruments from which birders can choose in the pursuit of the hobby which obviously gratifies them. My brother, for example, is content with his inexpensive Hahn 8 x 42 binoculars; so is the beginner in their group. The two others both tote the high-priced Leica binoculars, which is the usually preferred optical instrument of many seasoned birders. A method called digiscoping is also popular among many birders. In this method, a birder takes pictures of the bird he likes the most with the use of a digital camera and the scope as a telephoto lens.

A gadget, called the National Geographic's Handheld Birds Personal Digital Assistant, is available for those who plan to take up birding in North America. This handy device is a digitized field guide containing more than one thousand five hundred visual representations of birds. It has a searchable database of over eight hundred North American bird species. Likewise featured in this gadget are four hours of bird call audios.

For those seriously considering birding as a hobby but are having second thoughts for fear of contracting the dreaded avian influenza (bird flu), know that you can take up the hobby and be safe from the fatal disease if you strictly observe the ethical slogan of birders worldwide: "Just watch, don't catch." If you follow the basic rules of keeping distance from sick birds, not handling dead ones, or refraining from catching birds from the wild, then your chances - as a birder - of contracting bird flu is practically nil.

Birding is indeed a worthwhile pursuit, as my brother asserts. He swears it is a most gratifying avocation, and that he simply can't get used to the happiness he experiences with each "adventure." [Read the Original Article]