Interview with Scott Weidensaul,
author of Of a Feather

Birding is one of the fastest-growing outdoor activities in America, and it’s just as popular with hip teens as it is with academic types. Scott Weidensaul, a bird bander and proponent for conservation, examines this colorful pastime and the figures who have contributed to our knowledge of birds. Of A Feather: A Brief History of American Birding is a lively account of this popular hobby.

Q: Birding has become a relatively mainstream hobby, one that is “now (almost) cool.” In your opinion, what are some of the factors that have contributed to the popularity of this pastime, especially in recent years?

Scott Weidensaul: A couple of reasons, I think. Birding is a great way to connect with the natural world, and that’s something that more and more Americans seem hungry to do. And it’s convenient—you can bird almost anywhere, including the biggest metropolitan areas in the country. In fact, some of the best birding spots are in the middle of major cities: Central Park in New York City and Mount Auburn Cemetery in the Boston area are inviting oases of green in the middle of urban landscapes that lure migrant species. You can bird in your backyard (something 81 million Americans do, even if only by watching their feeders), on vacation, or on a business trip. It’s the ultimate in portable hobbies.

But the biggest reason is the birds themselves. There are almost 10,000 species worldwide, more than 750 of them in North America. They are dazzlingly colorful, sing like angels, and bring the world right into your backyard. Just this morning in our yard here in eastern Pennsylvania, I saw a mourning warbler that was probably hatched in a spruce bog in Quebec, a prairie warbler on its way to Jamaica or Hispaniola, and a red-eyed vireo that will winter in the Amazon basin. Tomorrow they’ll be gone, and a whole new cast of migrants will have arrived overnight. Every time I step off the back porch, it’s a new adventure.

Q: Amateurs and ornithologists alike have made significant contributions to the history of birding, and it is interesting that many of these people have personalities that are as colorful as the birds they study. Is there something in particular about birds that attracts passionate, sometimes obsessive types to this hobby?

SW: I suspect that if you scratch deep enough in any area of science, you’ll find a lot of inspired eccentrics, but the history of bird study certainly has its fair share.

What struck me, though, is how often people who’d lived aimless, shifting lives became galvanized by birds and went on to make tremendous contributions. Mark Catesby, who created the first illustrated portfolio of American birds in the early 1700s, was a modestly wealthy layabout until he got the ornithological itch. William Bartram failed at everything he tried until 1772 when, in his thirties, he took off for the wilds of the Southeast and wrote one of the most important American books on birds and natural history.

Alexander Wilson came to the United States from Scotland in the 1790s, penniless and a convicted blackmailer; he became the Father of American Ornithology by working himself literally to death, collecting and illustrating new species of birds. And John James Audubon—a marvelously complicated guy, equal parts genius and liar—initially made a shambles of his business career, winding up in jail for debt, before plunging into painting the 435 masterpieces that make up his Birds of America.

Speaking of liars, one of my favorite characters is John Xantus who—if we can take his word for it—was a Hungarian noble and army officer who came to the U.S. in the 1850s, played piano in bordellos, dug ditches, and taught university classes. Maybe. We know he joined the U.S. Army, was posted to the Great Plains and became one of top collectors of new birds for the Smithsonian Institution, in his spare time. He eventually returned to Hungary to work for a national museum, claiming to have been an American naval captain and to have discovered dozens of new islands. We know he was an enlisted man in California at that time, though he was described by his commander as “the most unreliable man ever.”

Q: Readers of Of a Feather might be surprised to learn of the tension between hardcore listers—whose main concern is checking birds off their lists—and birders who are more concerned with conservation. Do you think these two parties will be able to reconcile their differences?

SW: First of all, it’s important to remember that a lot of serious listers are also serious conservationists—the division isn’t as neat as the question might imply. The listing mania started in the early twentieth century and, because most people enjoy the thrill of competition, it has become one of the driving forces in birding as it’s practiced in America today. There’s nothing wrong with listing, as long as it’s a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

There are some who view birds primarily as inventory—tick marks on their life lists, or year lists, or whatever; that kind of myopic view is thankfully fairly rare. There are also some terrific examples of ways in which birders have harnessed that competitive spirit specifically for conservation, like the annual World Series of Birding in New Jersey, which has raised more than $10 million for bird conservation.

The bigger problem, I think, is that birders don’t seem to be as motivated to act on their conservation concerns as you’d expect. This is strange because birding almost inevitably brings a recognition of the fragility and interconnectedness of nature. Maybe it’s because a lot of American birders seem to have a sense of entitlement. Their hobby is almost completely free, once they’ve bought a field guide and binoculars; they don’t have to buy a license, they don’t have to go to some special place that charges admission. Hunters and anglers have had it drummed into their heads for almost a century that conservation is expensive, and you have to shell out money to make sure the wildlife on which you depend remains healthy. We need more of that kind of ethic among birders. And, we need more of a political will among them to make decisions at the ballot box that will benefit birds and bird habitat.

Q: Where are some of the best places in the country for birding? Where else in the world can people find birds in their native habitats?

SW: How much time do you have? There are birds virtually everywhere on the planet, including both poles and the middle of the emptiest oceans. A where-to-go guide for a single state might fill 400 or 500 pages. A good start is any of the more than 500 national wildlife refuges across the country, not to mention national, state, and local parks.

But if I had to name a few: the lower Rio Grande in Texas and the mountains of southeastern Arizona for Mexican species like the elegant trogon and the tropical parula that barely cross into the U.S.; Monterey Bay in California, which is the premiere seabird site in the Lower 48; the prairie pothole grasslands of North Dakota in June, when songbirds, shorebirds, and waterfowl return to breed. There’s also the ridges of the Appalachians in fall, when migrant raptors are heading south, and the wetlands of Florida pretty much anytime of the year. Cape May, New Jersey, might be the single best birding spot on the continent—eighty thousand hawks, a million seabirds, and a million and a half shorebirds funnel through the peninsula every year, and no one even knows how to count how many songbirds come through, though during migration a quarter of a million in a day is a fair guess.

A personal favorite of mine is Fort Morgan on the Alabama coast near Mobile Bay; it’s one of the best spots to see songbirds coming north in the spring after they’ve just flown 600 miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico. If the birds run into bad weather during the crossing, they just pour out of the sky when they reach land. It’s called a fallout, and it’s breathtaking—the trees almost literally drip with birds.

And overseas, well, the sky’s the limit. Colombia alone has 1,700 species of birds, more than twice what’s found in all of North America. Asia, Africa, Latin America, Australia—you could spend many lifetimes and not see it all.

Q: In Of a Feather, you mention that you and your wife own “a ridiculous number” of bird books, many of which are field guides. How many books do you think your collection contains? Do you have a system to keep track of what you own?

SW: As I say in the book, I think they breed when we’re not watching. No, I couldn’t begin to guess how many we have. I just counted up what’s here in my office, which are mostly field guides, and it’s more than 300, including the stacks on the floor. If I added up the books in boxes in the attic and in the garage, it’s several thousand.

System? I use the “dig through the heap until you find it” system. Though I have to admit that, for all the chaos, I can usually lay my hands on the book I need pretty quickly.

Q: Selecting your first field guide can be a bit overwhelming because there are so many books on this topic. As a general introduction, which guides do you recommend for beginners? Which ones would you recommend for children?

SW: In the mid-twentieth century, there was basically just one field guide, Roger Tory Peterson’s venerable edition. One of the joys of birding today is that there are hundreds, ranging from comprehensive ones to those only dealing with hawks, or gulls, or whatever.

Peterson’s guide, now in its fifth edition, is still a good book, but the gold standard is the Sibley Guide to Birds by David Sibley, published in 2000. It’s a pretty intimidating book for beginning and intermediate birders. I usually recommend the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America, which doesn’t overwhelm a beginner with minutia but covers all the continent’s birds. Kenn Kaufman is one of the best birders in the world, and his guide is illustrated with photographs that have been digitally tweaked to show all of the important field marks. It’s easy to use, and small enough to fit in a back pocket.

I’d also start all but the youngest kids with Kenn’s guide. One of the frustrations I had as a youngster was that the children’s bird books I had only showed a few dozen of the most common species, so that I was forever seeing birds I couldn’t identify. It was incredibly frustrating.