Birdwatchers behaving like paparazzi

photo NNP/North News.

Sitings of rare bird species trigger middle-class flash mobs, armed with cameras and tripods

by Charlie Gillis

Laura Hawkins is an outgoing woman—the sort who chats 10 minutes on the phone with a stranger without introduction, yet doesn’t skimp on the personal details. But even she felt a trifle exposed last month when she emerged towel-clad from her morning shower to find a dozen or so photographers arrayed on the edge of her property, telephoto lenses trained on her kitchen window. The interlopers, it turned out, were not drawn by the flesh of a 61-year-old Massachusetts woman. They were looking for a spotted towhee, which had been reported near her home in the seaside village of Loblolly Cove.

Towhees are not uncommon birds. Tens of thousands of the spotted variety ply the continent’s western half, inhabiting a corridor reaching from the Canadian Prairies to southern Mexico. Yet the mere mention of one so far from home set off a frenzy in New England’s well-wired birding community. Within two days, the Hawkins’s property became a kind of ornithological red carpet, lined with tripods and day packs and fanatics armed with $5,000 binoculars. Tour buses made the hour-long trip from Boston, disgorging enthusiasts desperate for a glimpse of the orange-sided celebrity. Often as not, they could find it flitting around an abandoned swing set in Hawkins’s yard...Continue reading...