What Is An Ornithologist?

What do bird watchers call themselves? Very broadly, anyone who watches birds is a bird watcher. The children that feed bread to the ducks at the park, the neighbour with the bird feeder hanging in the backyard, visitors to the national parks to see if they can spot the powerful owl, and the enthusiast who plans her third trip to Borneo just to view that one species missing from her huge list of birds she has seen in the world–all these are bird watchers.

The term that describes a person who searches out and tries to identify all the birds they see, is usually called a birder. Birding often but not always includes listing–keeping careful track of birds they see, ticking them off on their lists. There are life lists, country lists, state lists, backyard lists, and year lists of all these types and more. Often compared to stamp collecting, Birders are concerned with identification and distribution of birds in order to find and collect sightings of them.

Field ornithology is the study of living birds in their natural habitat. Population status, behaviour, and nesting are some of the topics of field ornithology. Recording data including counting the number of individual birds seen is a major component of field ornithology.

Waterbrook Bayview and Waterbrook Bowral are surrounded by Ornithologists, who are providing our Ecologist Dr Anne Clements a wealth of data which is paramount to preserve and enhance their environment.