When I started actively birding some 50 years ago, I did so under the tutelage of such greats as Helen Quilliam of Kingston, Orval Kelly of Brighton and Jim Baillie of Toronto (after whom the Baillie Birdathon was named). All these wonderful people who I knew so well have since passed away.

A few of these mentors would relate how unacceptable birding was among the general public, making it necessary to carry your binoculars in a brown paper bag so as not to attract attention. To a certain extent, that is still present today. It is difficult to understand this mentality among those who regard the practice of collecting memories of birds rather silly, but who seem to regard the collection of air sickness bags, balls of string, back scratchers and toothbrush handles as perfectly normal pursuits.

Back then birders felt the need to justify their interest, and explain their reason for choosing such a pursuit; today, they have no need to. If anything, today’s birders may wonder why the few remaining people who have no interest in birds, haven’t joined the bandwagon by now. Birding is North America’s second most popular hobby, topped only by gardening, if that’s even a fair comparison as birding and gardening work hand in hand, much like birding and photography.

If it is necessary to attach a dollar figure to birding to get our attention, then we can say that the hobby generates millions of dollars in revenue each year. At Point Pelee, birders there drop more than four million dollars into the local economy with just spring birding alone. In tourist areas, such as Prince Edward county, it has become an important tourist business during the shoulder seasons for that is when the interest in birding is the greatest, during both spring and fall migrations.

In my work at Prince Edward Point during the annual Birding Festival, I am seeing more and more birders from Quebec every year. In the past, these birders have driven all the way to Point Pelee, a very long drive if you come from Montreal and points east. Now they have an alternate location to consider, as an increasing number now take the exit ramp at Marysville and head for our very own Point Pelee.

As birding equipment gets more sophisticated, we will see even more persons become attracted to the hobby. And money seems to be no object. We regularly see birders now with $3,000 binoculars swinging from their necks and $5,000 spotting scopes slung over their shoulder. Two way radios keep birding groups informed on site, and pocket field guides have almost become passé, in favour of iPads and other electronic devices. IPods are being used to take recorded birds songs into the field to verify sounds heard. Multimedia software programs have been designed now that can be accessed via a hand held PDA. National Geographic calls their version "Handheld Birds." And forget the pen and notepad as these hand held devices can also store all your notes about the sighting, including location, date, species, number of sightings, etc.

The telephone Rare Bird Hotline is pretty much outdated now as a hastily typed message, distributed via an e-mail listserv can reach hundreds of birders within seconds. Experienced birders can predict with uncanny accuracy, just by reading the weather, if there is going to be a major fallout of migratory birds this day, or if it’s better to simply stay at home and read a book. It can almost be thought of as an art form at which many observers have become extremely talented, employing the skill of remembering the songs and call notes of over 300 species as well as their habits, behaviour and other related characteristics that will serve to seek them out. Think of birders as skilled hunters who aim with binoculars and shoot with a camera.

We have come a long way, and those who have birded for many decades can appreciate the changes that have occurred, although often it is a challenge just keeping up with the technology that is now available out there. The Swarovski binoculars I now own are a far cry from my dad’s old army binoculars I started with, and the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs CDs are certainly a step up from the long play 33 and a third rpm long play recordings of bird songs I obtained in the mid-1960s. I saved for many years before I could finally afford a massive 28 volume collection of Arthur Cleveland Bent’s Life Histories of North American Birds which I still have in my reference library. Today the contents of that entire set are just a click away on the Internet and instantly retrievable, at no cost.

Don’t be surprised if you are driving through the village of Wellington and you see a massive flock of birds fly across the street in front of you. They are not starlings or blackbirds or something else that is generally quite common. Doubtless, these will be waxwings. The majority, however, will be something special, a bird that looks like a waxwing, but is a little bit different. These are not the usual common garden variety cedar waxwings we are accustomed to seeing occasionally in our backyards, although there may be a few in amongst them. Upon closer examination, these are noticeably different - larger, greyer and with a peculiar voice which collectively sounds like hundreds of nestlings calling for food; they do not have the fine, thin, lispy notes of the cedar waxwing. When viewed from underneath, the rufous-red under tail coverts clearly separate these birds from the more common cedar waxwings.

These birds are Bohemian waxwings, and eastern Ontario is experiencing blizzards of them this winter. In the Quinte region, many seem concentrated in the Wellington area where there are numerous shrubs and trees with frozen fruit still attached. While the more familiar cedar waxwing nests right across Ontario, it isn’t every year we get to see its larger Bohemian cousin. That’s because they nest in northern Ontario - in fact, as far north as a bird can get without crossing over into northern Manitoba. They like the river banks along the open muskegs of the Hudson Bay Lowlands and it is there they seek out nesting habitat, and feed on the native berries that grow nearby.

However, things go awry when the pantry shelves become bare. Like another northern species, the redpoll who has responded this year to a shortage of birch seeds, and has travelled to our area in search of food, so it has been with the Bohemian waxwing. Last summer’s relentless drought has resulted in a poor crop of native mountain-ash berries in much of northern Ontario this winter and this has forced Bohemian waxwings to wander both south and east this winter. While here, they will munch on the tiny frozen apples of flowering crab and will exploit any European buckthorn berries they can find that haven’t already been consumed by wintering robins. The movement of both redpolls and Bohemian waxwings are only part of a mass movement of northern avian residents this winter as they leave their normal haunts and check out the seed and berry restaurants in this part of the province. Pine grosbeaks are also here in small groups as they, too, choose mountain ash berries as their staple diet. And very few people, even casual observers who normally don’t make it a point to look for birds, can’t help but see a barred owl or two this winter. There’s a lot of stuff out there this winter.

Expert birder Ron Pittaway of Minden in his bird population predictions had this to say about the Bohemian waxwing population this winter. “Expect a flight this winter because the mountain ash berry crop in the boreal forest was affected by drought. Even though some areas have large crops, many berries are hard with low moisture content. Farther south, Bohemians will be attracted to the usually abundant buckthorn berries because European mountain ash and ornamental crabapple crops are generally low and of poor quality.”

For most northern birds, once they find a food source, they will usually hang around all winter, and this is what they have done in this Prince Edward County village on Lake Ontario. Wellington resident Sydney Smith of Narrow Street has been keeping an eye on them as they come and go, sometimes in small groups, other times in large flocks such as the estimated 250 that descended on her street two weekends ago. Bohemian waxwings tend to be the nomads of the bird world, and wander all over the countryside exploiting food sources as they find them. In 2000, during a similar irruption, they actually outnumbered cedar waxwings, and flocks numbering more than 1,000 were routinely seen in the Picton and Napanee areas. Because they will join flocks of cedar waxwings and travel the countryside together, they make the job of determining accurate population counts difficult. Other times, they remain aloof in flocks of their own.

How long they will hang around this winter is uncertain. Generally by the end of March and into April, their thoughts turn to pairing up and nesting, and will gradually return to the Hudson Bay Lowlands. Bird feeder operators have no need to worry about what to offer them while they are here; Bohemian waxwings very seldom have any interest in feeders, preferring instead to dine on any available fruit still hanging from trees. And when you think about it, we probably wouldn’t want 500 to 1,000 waxwings as daily guests at our feeders anyway!