
Stellers Jay. Photo credit: Chris Dale/Bird Studies Canada
Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black – stars of the British Columbia/Yukon-filmed comedy The Big Year – introduced me to the world of bird watching. In the comedy, Wilson, Martin and Black’s characters travel across North America to see or hear the most bird species in a calendar year during the American Birdwatching Association’s annual “Big Year” contest.
The next day my partner and I played our own version of a ‘Big Morning’, trying to spot as many birds as we could on sunrise walk through Vancouver’s West End. We spotted seven different bird species including gulls, herons, widgeons and mallards. Suddenly we were hooked. The allure of walking around with binoculars to differentiate grebes from cormorants was no longer an activity reserved for our parents or our scientist friends.
It turns out birding, bird watching or ‘twitching’ as it’s called in the United Kingdom, is a pretty popular activity: according to 2006 survey done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service there are about 48 million birdwatchers in the United States. In Canada, more than 550,000 Canadian adults take part in birdwatching activities annually according to a 2006 study on wildlife viewing activities.
Continue reading:
Birders of a Feather Flock together for Vancouver Bird Week May 4-11