| April 2001 Bird Lecture with special guest Mr. Jack Gorman |
Tonight I will be presenting "An Introduction to the study of Birds Through Bird Watching". As I understand your group, part of your program involves nature studies. All my life, starting as a teenager, I have been interested in nature and fascinated with birds. So I am delighted to be discussing birds and bird watching with you. And what a good time for such a discussion. Springtime! It's an invigorating time, the favorite time for birds and for watching birds. After a long winter birds are on the move, many of them are migrating north. Food is becoming more available to them. They have molted and are in their very best plumage. They're happy. They're singing. They're looking for mates and preparing to mate and nest. In south Texas, April and May are the prime months for birds and for watching them. Hundreds of people from all over the United States and many from around the world will be coming to South Texas to bird watch during spring migration. Bird watching is one of the fastest growing hobbies in America. It is estimated that about 30 million Americans of all ages are birdwatchers. They range in ability and interest from people who only watch from their back yards, to people who observe birds while walking in the park, to birders who take trips to birding hotspots, to birding fanatics who travel all over the country and the world to observe bird life. It only takes three things to study and enjoy birds. First it takes interest and curiosity. Second it takes a pair of good binoculars, binoculars that have a magnification of 6 to 10 powers. You can purchase such binoculars for as little as 30 dollars or as much as 900 dollars. I generally use these 10 power lightweight binoculars, which cost about 200 dollars. The third and most important prerequisite is to carry and be familiar with a field guide to the birds. Field guides are a birders' Bible. Let me expound on the history of field guides how they have made the sport of birding possible. Humans have always found birds interesting. Even in ancient times people recognized different types of birds. The Bible mentions over 20 species of birds. Bird watching in the United States started with a man named John James Audubon who was a knar-do-well frontiersman and artist in the early 19th century. He made it the main objective of his life to find, identify and paint all the birds in America. At that time America consisted of only that territory east of the Mississippi River. Audubon wandered mostly on foot throughout the east from Florida to Canada and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. He found and painted most of our eastern birds. His paintings were reproduced and published in book form in 1851. They were not only artistic masterpieces but gave us the first good record of American bird life. But paintings do not make a practical field guide. |
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