ledo. Now, there were a couple of spots that were pretty wooded, so that was kind of cheating a little bit,” he says. One of Links’ s favorite finds to date? A Connecticut Warbler walking along the library square.“ That’ s a surprise. That’ s a bird of the Northern spruce bogs, and there it is walking on the sidewalk. With [ urban birding ] it’ s not so much the rarity of the bird as it is the uniqueness of the context,” he explains.
It’ s not easy to pin down just who these newfangled birders are. According to the 2000 Census, more than 46 million Americans say they birdwatch in some form.“ The demographics of birding in general have shifted fairly recently. It used to be two groups: the stereotypical little old ladies with their sneakers and binoculars, and then the other group of real hotshot, hard-core types who go out alone and list as many birds as they can,” Links notes. And now? There are still those intense loners who live to look for birds and list those they find all by themselves, thank you very much.( Links counts himself among them:“ We’ re out to go birding, not kibbitzing!”) But that’ s changing.“ Today I would say birding is probably pretty evenly split between men and women, and they are going out in groups,” says Links. Turns out, there really isn’ t an“ average” urban birder. At least not yet, anyway. And there isn’ t any one reason why people scour their cities for birds.
For Sharon“ Bird Chick” Stiteler, the hobby is part habit— and part obsession. An urban-birding blogger and author of the forthcoming book, City Birds, Country Birds( Adventure Publications), Stiteler has always been a city-based birder.“ I grew up in Indianapolis, and my parents didn’ t necessarily have time to take me out to the middle of nowhere to go look at birds, so I would just watch them wherever I was,” she says. Now in Minneapolis, the 32-year-old is so devoted that she carries a miniature telescope in her purse.“ I honestly cannot help it. If I’ m at a cookout or an outdoor wedding or something— and especially if it’ s spring and migration’ s going on— I’ ll have that with me,” she says. It often comes in handy. During one outdoor gathering, a nighthawk migration flying overhead captivated Stiteler and, ultimately, the rest of the party as well:“ You start pointing and looking up, and everyone at the table around you starts looking up, too. Before you know it, you’ re doing an impromptu lesson on nighthawk migration.” When she’ s not urban birding, the freelance writer covers,
City dwellers like Boston’ s Fredericka Veikley( front) need not leave town to spy plenty of feathered friends.
58 | Feb / Mar / 07 plentymag. com