Birders of a Feather Flock Together for Boomer Flight of Fancy

One spring day in 1981, 10-year-old Paul Fagala looked out his bedroom window in Cove, Texas, and spotted a rose-breasted grosbeak. The boy reached for his binoculars and a field guide, new Christmas presents.

“I looked at him through my binoculars and thought he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen,” Fagala, now 25, said from his home in Grand Prairie, Texas. “I looked in my field guide and found that bird. I was hooked.”

From that first identification began a lifetime of birding as a hobby.

Fagala belongs to the growing ranks of bird enthusiasts who spend their time--and billions of dollars--getting closer to warblers, eagles, owls, puffins, plovers, egrets and other feathered friends.

Five years ago, more than 10% of the adults in the United States took birding trips of at least a mile from home and 30% fed birds, according to a 1991 Interior Department survey.

A 1996 survey put the number of bird-watchers at more than 20%, according to Paul Kerlinger, a New York-based ecotourism consultant who tracks birders and their spending habits.

All those backyard bird-watchers and traveling birders spent about $14.4 billion on trips, equipment, birding magazines, membership dues and birdseed in 1991.

“It’s about the same as fishermen and more than hunters. There are almost 10 times as many bird-watchers as hunters,” said Greg Butcher, executive director of the 18,000-member American Birding Assn., which has added about 2,000 members a year for the last five years.

Some venture no farther than the backyard feeder, but others hit the road at dawn to walk through peaceful wildlife sanctuaries or spend thousands to watch exotic birds in places such as Belize or Antarctica.

The more competitive keep “life lists” of every species they’ve spotted. Fagala, who set a 1996 goal of 225 species, surpassed the mark in November when he saw 40 in one day around Dallas.

One member of the association claims she recently saw her 8,000th type of bird, no small feat considering the world holds roughly 9,700 identified species.

“It’s addictive. It’s a lifelong treasure hunt, and it’s like coming into an art gallery, but you’ll never know what’s going to hang on the wall,” said Pete Dunne of the New Jersey Audubon Society, a renowned birding author.

As a little boy, Dunne would get home from school, pick up his binoculars and run out the back door.

“There was nobody telling me what to do. I was into my world,” recalls Dunne, 45.

“What had been everyday had suddenly turned into ‘wow,’ and ‘wow’ beats almost anything on the planet.”

The hobby can be enjoyed in some urban areas as well in rural areas.

Near Philadelphia’s airport is the 1,200-acre John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, the largest freshwater tidal marsh in Pennsylvania. It hosts more than 280 species, including great blue herons, and is a stopover for migratory birds.

The refuge, which draws 100,000 visitors annually, was cited in December by the National Audubon Society as one of the Important Bird Areas. The designation of the spot Audubon calls an “urban oasis” is part of a worldwide effort to protect natural habitats.

Cape May, N.J., a popular beach town, is a major stop on the migrant birds’ Eastern flyway. The Cape May Bird Observatory, headed by Dunne, tracks 350 species and counted about 70,000 hawks this year. The area draws more than 100,000 people who spend upward of $10 million there annually.

“I know of no place on the planet that offers great natural spectacles more consistently than Cape May, and I know of no place where the possibility of something unusual occurring is a matter-of-fact, day-to-day occurrence,” Dunne said.

Hawk Mountain, a 2,380-acre Appalachian nature preserve in Kempton, Pa., also designated as “important,” each year attracts about 80,000 visitors who spend more than $43 million. They get a prime look at migrating hawks.

“It’s a great place to introduce kids and adults to birds of prey,” said Keith Bildstein, research director at Hawk Mountain, where 20,000 migrating hawks pass each year. “It sort of makes them instant conservationists of these birds, and they go out and spread the word.”

Hawk Mountain and Cape May both have research centers that offer guided walks, programs and birding gift shops. They are but two prominent signs of a birding boom that can translate into big money and a lot of time for fanatics.

“It can cost anything from a tank of gas to $10,000,” said Butcher of the American Birding Assn.

A top-flight pair of binoculars can cost $1,000, but low-rent birders can do well on a $100 pair, an inexpensive field guide and fuel.

Fagala, a church youth minister, spends little money on his pastime. His excursions are mostly local but include two road trips a year to the bird-rich upper Texas coast to watch migrants.

“I enjoy nature very much and birding is a way to get me there,” he said. “I can leave all my stress, worries and troubles behind and completely concentrate on the birds.”

Birders say they also enjoy the camaraderie of other enthusiasts, some of whom return to the same places each year as dependably as the migrants they’ve come to watch.

Bird-watchers span the generations, but most range from 30 to 65. They tend to be college-educated, suburban and overwhelmingly white with above-average incomes. Men and women alike participate.

“I think people are looking for an outdoors hobby, and if you’re looking for an outdoors hobby, this is a real easy one to get involved in,” Butcher said.

Experts cite the aging of the baby boomers and their elders as a significant factor in the birding boom.

“We still like to go outside. We’ve all ruined our knees jogging so we can’t climb mountains anymore,” Dunne said. “People are looking for an excuse to go out and interface with Ma Nature, and birds are the most obvious and most manifest vehicle.”

Thirty-year-old Katrin Norton of Quakertown, Pa., visiting Hawk Mountain recently, said, “As I got older I took the time to sit down. You admire what goes on around you.”

Kerlinger, the ecotourism consultant, says bird-watching statistics show businesses that preserving wildlife habitats makes economic sense and tells bird-watchers that their activity is “economically important.”

“It’s hopefully a way of empowering their will to be heard by Congress and by business,” Kerlinger said.

Hotels and restaurants reap the rewards, as do shops catering to bird-lovers. Louise Dawson, owner of J.J. Cardinal’s Wild Bird & Nature Store in Grand Blanc, Mich., opened her shop five years ago and recently relocated to a space twice as big.

She sells 8,000 pounds of birdseed a week.

“I know that there is a tenderness in these people and how they feel about wildlife,” Dawson said. “They do not need glitz, loud noise or hectic anything to entertain them.

“They are aware of all the little things.”