Bird watchers in the UK

[Paul House]

Hi, Does anyone have any idea how many (approx) people bird watch in the UK?

[BM]

Hi,

I suppose it depends what you mean? According to Wikipedia It is frequently said that "birding" is observing wild birds for pleasure, "birdwatching" is amateur study of birds, and "twitching" is seeing rare birds to accumulate a long list of species seen worldwide or in some given area.

So I suppose most of the UK population have at some point have been Birding and possibly even birdwatching ......... even if it's absent mindedly staring at 2 squabbling blue tits on a bird table!

Now twitching, well that’s a different matter. According to the book "The Big Twitch" there are about 4000 active Twitchers in the UK with an estimated further 3000 who Twitch occasionally.

[Paul House]

Thank you very much, anything rare up there recently? I'm on the south coast, saw my first hoopoe at Eastbourne golf course of all places, beautiful and not difficult to spot from a distance, sort of looks like a huge butterfly in flight.

[currykev]

I've had the pleasure of seeing hoopoes in India and even Palma Mallorca 2 months ago,but never in the UK yet.You were indeed lucky to see it as the RSPB reckon less than 100 are found here.