Taking Flight
Grounded during the pandemic, many of us turned our eyes to the sky, and to the birds that embodied the liberty we longed for. Is this the beginning of a birdwatching boom?
The beginning of a birdwatching boom
While humans have largely stayed home over the past year, there have been plenty of anecdotal reports of animals reclaiming their habitats or even extending their territory. The David Attenborough-narrated documentary The Year Earth Changed, which chronicled the profound changes in the natural world in 2020, featured penguins exploring pavements in Cape Town, deer returning to their ancient grazing patch in Nara, Japan, and a leopard staking its claim on terraces at a safari lodge.
For city dwellers, waking gently to the sound of birds chirping has been one of the few upsides of lockdown, when traffic noise was replaced by the calming consonance of nature. Being stuck in one place also gave people time to explore their immediate surroundings, seeking solace in urban parks or nearby nature reserves.
“I believe many people found that nature helped get them through the isolation that the pandemic has brought,” says Jackie Cestero, a local conservationist collaborating with Cap Juluca, a Belmond Hotel on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, to improve the resort’s sustainability initiatives. “Birdwatching in particular seems to be on the rise as a result of Covid-19. Many of our guests have noted they started birding during the pandemic and want to continue to explore birds when they visit Anguilla.”
The same is true closer to home. “During lockdowns all over the world, people paid more attention to nature,” says Singapore-based Yong Ding Li, regional coordinator of the Global Flyways programme for Birdlife International. “I know several people who started ‘backyard birding’, which is basically observing the species of birds in one’s backyard.”
Oriental Pied Hornbills, for example, have been more visible in the Lion City not because of a change in their own behaviour, but due to more people stalking and posting photos of these distinctive creatures on Instagram. It’s not unusual to see throngs of birdwatchers and photographers at the Singapore
Botanic Gardens, Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve and the outlying island of Pulau Ubin waiting to spot a Straw-headed Bulbul, Jambu Fruit Dove, Great-billed Heron or Lesser Adjutant Stork, species that call the cosmopolitan city-state home and are difficult to find in other parts of Asia. For Yong, who manages and coordinates bird conservation projects across the region, the more birdwatchers there are, the better. When he arrived in Singapore in 1990s, he was one of only a handful of birdwatchers in the city; the community today numbers in the thousands.
One appeal of birdwatching is its low barriers to entry. All you need is curiosity, time, patience, a key location and, if you’re keen enough, a really good set of binoculars. “When you’re starting out, find a small local place to go birdwatching and learn all the birds in that area. Get yourself familiar with the more common species and expand from there,” says Adrian
Boyle, a guide and ornithologist for Us-based Quark Expeditions, which specialises in sailings to the Arctic and Antarctica, and offers birdwatching programmes. But the goal isn’t to capture the best shot of a rare bird in flight, Boyle adds. “Many people focus on getting photos and don’t fully appreciate the birds; sometimes it’s best to leave the camera in the bag.”
The stereotypical image of a birdwatcher—a white, middle-aged, binocular-toting male—is a cliché even in Europe and the US, where the hobby is more established. A study by Swarovski Optik, one of the leading manufacturers of high-end binoculars, identified about 20 million birdwatchers across the two regions. Contrary to the perception that it is dominated by men in their 50s and above, their research found an even distribution among genders as well as age ranges, with millions of birdwatchers under the age of 44.
Birdwatching in Asia has grown in the past decade, too. A Facebook group in India called “Indian Birds” had 180,000 members at last count. And a story in the South China Morning Post earlier this year asserted that the activity is considered cool in Beijing and, like other slow living pursuits such as making sourdough and crafting pottery, is attracting millennial and Gen Z enthusiasts. The article profiled Li Siqi, also known as Crazy Birdy, an avid birdwatcher in her early 20s who leads sightings in Mount Ling, 120 km west of the capital. Through her environmental education company, she teaches families about the city’s rich biodiversity. Densely populated locations might not seem like the best places for this peaceful activity, but Beijing has the second largest number of bird species of all the capital cities in the G20, because it’s a bird migration pit stop.
A single bird sighting can pique someone’s interest in the hobby. For ecologically focused resorts, that simple act of discovery forms part of their mandate to nurture a conservation mindset. “Many of our repeat guests develop an interest in birding,” says Nicole Robinson, chief marketing officer of luxury travel company And beyond, which runs lodges in biodiverse areas in Asia, Africa and South America. “Every lodge highlights about 10 birds to spot during their stay to get guests started. When we see guests engage with the little things, they slow down and get into it.”
Irshad Mubarak, the resident naturalist of The Datai Langkawi, a resort in Malaysia known for its eco-centric approach and initiatives, says: “I see many guests who first come here with little knowledge of birds return with their own pair of binoculars and later with supersized camera lenses.” And little wonder: there are more than 260 species of birds in Langkawi and nearly 100 species around The Datai Langkawi itself, of which White-bellied Sea Eagles, Banded Kingfisher, Orange breasted Trogon and Blue-winged Pitta are the most coveted sightings.
For many, the beauty of birdwatching lies in its ephemeral nature, and the lifelong learning that comes with it. Another draw has less to do with spectating and more with being an agent for change. There has been a push among birdwatchers to act as citizen scientists, primarily helping in data collection. The details and figures they gather can have a measurable impact on the conservation of birdlife.
“I recently participated in the Global Birding Weekend. Using the ebird phone app created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the United States, I was able to share Anguilla’s bird counts with more than 51,000 birders from around the world, including more than 2,100 from Asia,” says Cestero. “That means the snapshot of birds on our tiny 35 square miles of rock and sand is part of the big picture of species across the globe.”
Once we can fly freely again ourselves, birdwatching is a hobby we can easily enjoy anywhere, from the savannahs of Africa to the remote reaches of Antarctica. Regardless of the possibilities of international travel, however, scanning the skies for avian activity in our own home towns can be just as fulfilling. “No two days are ever the same, even at the same site,” says Cestero. “The appeal of birdwatching is that it is never static.”