Where in the world are all the birders? Based on the visitors to BackyardBirdsUtah from data compiled by ClustrMaps, birders are everywhere. I'm thrilled that birders from six continents and more than twenty countries have visited this blog, including guests from South Africa, Italy, Honduras, Brazil, Poland, Turkey, France, Serbia, Australia, and the Bahamas. It is my hope that one day I'll be able to visit all those fine places myself to enjoy their local birds.As the About.com Guide to Birding and Wild Birds, I get numerous requests to help identify birds, both in North America and abroad. Too often, we assume that our backyard birds and those locally known to us are the only species, but in fact there are many beautiful and entertaining birds all over the world. Ornithologists estimate that there are approximately 10,000 species of birds today, which makes my pathetic life list -- including recent update for the brown pelican -- seem woefully inadequate and incomplete. Wherever we go, we can find birds, just as they find us at our backyard feeders and bird baths. So long, then, as we can find each other, we shall always be birders.
2 comments:
Hey Melissa, nice shot of the Brown Pelican! I find that other folks from around the world find our local backyard birds as interesting as we find theirs! Especially when there are so many species found only in specific locations on the planet. For example, the Yellow-billed Magpie, found only in the California central valley.
Isn't birding great!
Thanks, Larry! I always love finding new birds whenever I travel, and I'm glad to be able to share them. You don't want to know how many photos of pelicans I took while we were in Mexico, but at least one came out great with the beautiful water to boot!
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