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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DunnoKev" data-source="post: 1480878" data-attributes="member: 38448">I understand Fozzy's position entirely. There are so many different tribes calling themselves birders it makes it impossible to define a birder. Me, I like to understand something about the birds I encounter. And just like a birdwatcherlister whatever isn't usually happy to say they've seen one in a book they have to go see the whatever, I'm not happy to just gen up on the thing in a field guide/handbook and then see it a few times on an overseas trip and list it, or see it off course here.Most of my World Listing mates look at me with incredulity when I say I'm going back to the same place for a third, fourth, fifth time to see the same species. But usually it's at a slightly different time, so I'll get to enjoy sussing out their behaviour a little more. But my mates say 'go here and see a sunbittern and a few hundred other new ones'. Even though seeing a sunbittern would be nice, I wouldn't get a 'huge kick' from it.So what thrills me more, a trip to somewhere I'd never been and a couple of hundred new species, or finding a species in decline recolonising my patch? Having had both this year, I'd say both were nice in their own way, but for sure I would've hated to be missing the buzz I'm getting from the latter.So to focus on the topic, I've nearly always called myself a birder for nearly thirty years now. During my dude era, my twitching era, my patching era, my suppressing era, my Observatory era, my ringing era. The one constant has been that I've 'birded'. The actions of the the likes of Fozzy (and me) might seem inexplicable to some, but I watch birds because I want to see them, to really see them. I never just watch. If you 'bird', you're a 'birder'.</blockquote>

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