A one generation hobby…and a concern for the future (1 Viewer)

[Andrew Whitehouse]

My younger son (16) is a very keen (and sharp eyed) birder. Also the student birding community in St Andrews is as active as it has been during my time (close to 30 years) here. The only comparable time would be the late 90s when student birders included Oscar Campbell, Nick Moran and Rob Lambert.

Rob

I can think of someone else from those days too .

I can remember being a teenage birder in the 80s and people worrying that there weren't many young birders, so it's not a new problem. My impression is that it's actually got a bit more popular with young people in recent years. I know a few very active young birders in the Aberdeen area these days, having hardly encountered anyone under 30 for most of the rest of the time I've lived here.

 

[edenwatcher]

I can think of someone else from those days too .

Oops yes - sorry Andrew!

Rob

 

[angusmcoatup]

Young people have generally little access to cars today. So twitching and contact with nature in general is limited to areas with ready public transport. All these anti-car and anti-carbon campaigns pushed people into the virtual / gaming attractions.

Though when I started birding in the mid 80’s most of the other birders I saw were walking, cycling , getting (not particularly good) public transport or sharing lifts. In the Uk contact with nature isn’t difficult even in the centre of many cities, twitching however is expensive and hitching has become a rarity.

 

[Kirk Roth]

The odd, socially awkward people of our generation, I guess most of us on this forum are 50 plus, were into model railways, trainspotting and birdwatching, as it was then. Modern nerdy youngsters leaving school are not interested in these things as we were. Banks of computer screen are the norm now.

This is an interesting comment to me - because in the U.S. I've observed something of a surge in young birders and young nature-hobbyists in general (herps, moths, Odonates - all sorts of things) - and a large part of my awareness of it is their online presence. There are better cameras and better ways of both sharing sightings and access to ID information, which have seemed to fuel a great deal of young interest.

In other words, my sense here is practically the opposite. I'm seeing a lot more "young nerds" who are enabled into quirky passions precisely because of the banks of computer screens... which after all we are all staring at even at this moment.

I can't speak at all of situations in other countries - but in my circles concerns about birding being unpopular among the youth are nonexistent.

 

[pbjosh]

Is it also the case that a twitch is not necessarily the best indicator? It does appeal much more to a certain type of male psychology.

Yeah twitching is also something that varies between birding country/culture, by a lot. I rarely twitch, and few of my friends do.

 

[earlytorise]

Is there any data on this?

The level of wealth owned by each successive generation in the west is shrinking. This may impact the youth's ability to spend a fortune on twitches. I don't know for sure, just speculation. My experience is that lots of young people will continue to exist in "plain birding" - little bit of bread and no fancy cheeses, if you will.

A rarity is found not by rarity-hunters but by patch-workers, so discoveries won't be a problem. But in my few years in the UK I was grateful for a frequent stream of updates on each bird from RBA/BG - if twitching becomes less popular, that aspect won't be as reliable and it will make twitches a bit harder.

 

[Bewick]

In the Netherlands and Germany, there are many young birders.
The UK lacks readily accessible resources for sharing sightings, like waarneming.nl or ornitho.de which hampers the development of new generations.
I received a rather vile message from someone from birdtrack or a similar reporting service when I mentioned this before, but nothing seems to have changed in recent years.

Could you expand on this point? Whats the issue with the bird club websites that exist for most British counties?

 

[Larry Sweetland]

Yeah twitching is also something that varies between birding country/culture, by a lot. I rarely twitch, and few of my friends do.

Good point. I suppose to a large extent my comments were about the twitching side of birding. And the original post is a comparison pic specifically of a twitch. I do know a couple of young birders locally, and although they're pretty keen on birding, twitching doesn't really interest them. So maybe just because the UK twitching crowd scenes are predominantly oldies these days, it might not totally reflect lack of young birders. They're just elsewhere!

 

[Bewick]

Good point. I suppose to a large extent my comments were about the twitching side of birding. And the original post is a comparison pic specifically of a twitch. I do know a couple of young birders locally, and although they're pretty keen on birding, twitching doesn't really interest them. So maybe just because the UK twitching crowd scenes are predominantly oldies these days, it might not totally reflect lack of young birders. They're just elsewhere!

I think the lack of interest in twitching is largely due to younger birders being more interested in building up global lists compared to regional lists.

 

[Paul Chapman]

Good point. I suppose to a large extent my comments were about the twitching side of birding. And the original post is a comparison pic specifically of a twitch. I do know a couple of young birders locally, and although they're pretty keen on birding, twitching doesn't really interest them. So maybe just because the UK twitching crowd scenes are predominantly oldies these days, it might not totally reflect lack of young birders. They're just elsewhere!

I cannot see that the RSPB produce annual youth member statistics but there were 195,000 in the 2021/22 Annual Report. The figure passed 100,000 in February 1980.

Given an evens bet on such things, I would put money on a decline and nothing in this thread with occasional anecdotal evidence or highlighting the partiality of the evidence to the contrary persuades me against that.

All the best

Paul

 

[la_ravachol]

Though I had an interest in birds when I was a young child (due to the influence of older family members), this disappeared completely when I was a teenager and was only rekindled in my late 20s for two reasons, that I can see. Firstly, technology (apps, ebird, etc.), and moving somewhere (away from the UK, in this case) with an affordable and extensive public transport system.

I think the second point is especially important. I don't sense a declining interest among young people, quite the opposite, and if there were greater affordable access then I think we would see many young people out birding.

On occasion I bump into younger birders, people in their teens and 20s, practically always on twitches but pretty much only locally in Madrid -for example, on the buses I already mentioned. I regularly return to England and attempt to bird there using public transport too and it's a pain in the arse. I spent five weeks in my hometown this summer and didn't even bother trying to get to some good birding spots in the same county because it's so impractical without a car. It's not like these places are in the middle of nowhere either, they're by large urban areas. Every couple of years I take a long trip to the US and it's a similar story there.

I work as a teacher and the teenagers I encounter who have an interest in birds typically tell me they don't feel as if they have the time to pursue it much, but I think that problem may be relatively unique to Spain where we have a particularly long school day with frequent exams. Although having said that, I could be underappreciating the time constraints on young people elsewhere.

Long story short: from my perspective there's a growing interest but also growing challenges for young people in many places.

 

[simmojunior]

I am 32 and there are now so many more young birders than when I was starting out plus social media makes it easier for them to connect. Any visit to Spurn and you will see regular groups and individuals in their early 20s. We had various initiatives, which for all their faults, moved the dial on this. We had Next Generation Birders, Spurn young birder of the year and various BTO initiatives such as their Youth Council. Whilst definitely true 15 years ago, I think the idea young people are not interested in nature or birding no longer holds water.

 

[Mysticete]

I think another factor to keep in mind, is that compared to some hobbies, Birding really isn't as dependent on "roping them in" young. A lot of birders I know only got into the hobby later in life, or only became serious about it later. I suspect only a few people from my birding club were hardcore birders in their teens.

So really I am not too worried about the hobby itself being endangered from lack of interest by future generations. The nature of that hobby may in fact change quite a bit, including things such as twitching, how info is shared, and the subinterests of birders.

 

[bonxie birder]

Great responses. I love the technology involved now, but I understand the concern of not seeing lifers any more, because you’ve already seen a better view at home. I find it hard explaining to my 20 something son, the “joy” of pulling into some random Norfolk town and heading for the nearest phone box and using up all my money on premier numbers to find out if the Oriental Pratincole was still present. Happy days.

 

[TheBlackGrouse]

The young ones are often driven by the sites that share sightings of birds in the Netherlands. They have lists for everything, there are very good at plumage details, but they simply follow the GPS coordinates and you find them on the beaten track of birding: hides, observation posts, piers etc.

When they are in a forest in the breeding season they have no clue what's going on there, but they beat me easily in a discussion about the identification of yellow/green Warbler (sub)species in Europa. In fact, I almost never see them when I'm birding in large forests. There you have to find your own birds.

For the record, there is nothing wrong with that, but collecting species has a limit. In the end you reach a point where you see one new species a year in your country. And then they get bored. On the other hand, the more research oriented, who count migrants, collect data of breeding birds, keep motivated for the rest of their lives.

That's what worries me, we have lots of young birders but they stop too early.

 

[earlytorise]

In the end you reach a point where you see one new species a year in your country. And then they get bored.

LOL that is precisely a description of me

 

[bonxie birder]

LOL that is precisely a description of me

Which is precisely why I love my year lists.

 

[opisska]

Come to Ouessant now in season, the whole island is full of young guns, flying low on the rental bicycles, barely stopping to pick up the binos before heading to the next bird.

 

[simmojunior]

Come to Ouessant now in season, the whole island is full of young guns, flying low on the rental bicycles, barely stopping to pick up the binos before heading to the next bird.

Please don't engage in stereotypes about young birders. Different young birders are different. Some twitch, some patch, some travel. When I was involved in Next Generation Birders (NGB), we had to put up with all sorts of nonsense about us all having rich parents, all being too soft as some birder hitchhiked round India in the 1970s, all not serving our "apprenticeship" before going abroad, all being twitchers etc...We even had a crazy, obviously untrue story about unnamed young birders leaving Scilly by helicopter for a Cornish Black Redstart. If you want to encourage young birders, this is not the way to do it.

 

[opisska]

Maybe I was too cheeky, but I am just describing how it looks like on the island: there is young people everywhere and they are there not to just lie around - they mean business. That, in my view, is really good for the future of the hobby.