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Message: <blockquote data-quote="james holdsworth" data-source="post: 3541442" data-attributes="member: 79864">This is it. Many ''watch birds'' a bit, few are ''bird-watchers.''Implying birding popularity by going to where birders congregate is invalid. If birding numbers were anywhere near what some surveys suggest, we should encounter them frequently, everywhere. Birding festivals are always going to be full of birders, but it's the visits to regular parks and vacation spots where the lack of birders is telling.I've brought this up before - if birding really did enjoy this level of popularity, there would be shelves full of birding-related magazines and bird-related TV programming. At best, we get generic fluff like ''Birds and Blooms'' and the odd doc. on Discovery or the BBC. Sure there are specialist mags. through subscription only [Birding, NA Birds etc.] but I mean commercially available. When I look at a shelf full of mags, and see twenty publications for Horse fanciers and two for Birders, either the market is misreading things or the numbers are inaccurate.</blockquote>