Birdwatching - Famous Birdwatchers

Famous Birdwatchers

There are about 10,000 species of bird and only a small number of people have seen more than 7000. Many birdwatchers have spent their entire lives trying to see all the bird species of the world. The first person who started this is said to be Stuart Keith.

Some birders have been known to go to great lengths and many have lost their lives in the process. Phoebe Snetsinger spent her family inheritance travelling to various parts of the world while suffering from a malignant melanoma, surviving an attack and rape in New Guinea before dying in a road accident in Madagascar. She saw as many as 8,400 species. The birdwatcher David Hunt who was leading a bird tour in Corbett National Park was killed by a tiger in February 1985. In 1971 Ted Parker travelled around North America and saw 626 species in a year. This record was beaten by Kenn Kaufman in 1973 who travelled 69,000 miles and saw 671 species and spent less than a thousand dollars. Ted Parker was killed in an air-crash in Ecuador.

From 2008 the top life-list has been held by Tom Gullick, an Englishman who lives in Spain. In 2012 he became the first birdwatcher to log over 9,000 species. In 2008 two British birders, Alan Davies and Ruth Miller, gave up their jobs, sold their home and put everything they owned into a year-long global birdwatching adventure about which they a wrote a book called "The Biggest Twitch". They logged 4431 species on 31 October 2008.

Birdwatching literature, field guides and television programs have been popularized by birders like Pete Dunne and Bill Oddie.