Earlier this year it was revealed that the second fastest-growing hobby among 16-29 year olds, after jewellery-making, is one more often associated with rural retirees or anoraked middle-aged men: bird watching. According to research done for the RSPB, 750,000 Gen Z Brits enjoy the activity, a 1,088% increase since 2018.
Lira Valencia, a young birdwatcher, urban wildlife ranger and influencer has described that shift in a post on her Outside with Lira Instagram account. “Often,” she says, “people assume bird watchers are just quirky people who are obsessed with identifying birds. While this is true for a lot of birdwatchers, especially the OGs who have been doing it for most of their lives, a lot of young, budding bird watchers do it because it makes us feel good.
“It’s more about the social and mental health benefits rather than the bird itself. Though I’m not going to deny there are some birds that I will lose my cool over. Birding is a chance to feel something real and take a break from our digital lives.”
Anna Deacon, Edinburgh-based author of The Wild Fix, a fascinating new book about the benefits of time spent in nature, notes that this is a shift in demographic she has seen both on social media and in the outdoors. “It always used to seem to be that you go to bird hides and the people there would be retired, and have all the kit. “But what I love is that there is a whole new bunch of more rock and roll bird watchers, people who are discovering it and talking about it, and I love seeing their reactions.””
What’s striking about the new wave of bird watchers is how often they are finding their birding pleasures in an urban setting. As Deacon, my collaborator on a series of swimming books, shows me, you don’t have to go to a hide in a nature reserve to spot a bullfinch, a heron, or a chiffchaff. On a bright August morning she takes me out to a regular haunt, Warriston cemetery, one of the city's significant inner-city wildlife havens that even featured on Winterwatch in 2023.
Deacon is not Gen Z, but Gen X, and is a reminder that the surge in birdwatching is not confined to the young but has also swept through all generations.
While youth participation saw a tenfold increase, millennials showed a 216% increase, and Gen X participation grew by 66%. Even those ‘work hard, play hard’ Gen Xers, and baby boomers such as Game of Thrones star Sean Bean, who hosts the Get Birding podcast, are getting into it.
“I could do this all day and not get bored,” Deacon says as we find a spot on a log to watch and wait.
She has her camera to hand, as she does most days. “Taking a camera," she says, "somehow gives a different purpose to it. I am a photographer and it helps me to tell myself that I’m working, but actually really it’s a chance to escape and be by myself, to slow down and be more mindful.”
A blackbird in Warriston cemetery,, Edinburgh (Image: Anna Deacon)
She quotes David Attenborough: “One of the simplest things that you should do if you get the chance, when you get the chance, is just naturally to stop. Sit down. Don't move. Keep quiet. Wait 10 minutes. You'll be very surprised if something pretty interesting didn't happen within 10 minutes. Doing that in a woodland, if you haven't done it, is extraordinary.”
In fact, we don’t have to wait long, our eyes sweeping the bushes and also the long puddle of water ahead, where, she tells me, birds often come to drink. “There’s a bullfinch on top of that branch there,” she says, pointing to a flash of rose. Moments later, four finches swoop down towards the pool below, fluttering over its glinting surface.
Bird watching had been a passion for her as a child, when she had been a member of the Young Ornithologist Club. “I had, and still have, certain birds on my list that I have wanted to see. More recently, the first time I saw a goldcrest, I had a moment because I had been so captivated by the idea of them as a child. I lived in the Cairngorms and they were there and I thought I’d spot one but I never did.
“Then I saw one for the first time about three years ago here in Warriston and I was overwhelmed. In my head it had this mythical status of this gorgeous tiny little bird that weighs the same as a five pence piece.”
A robin in Warriston cemetery, Edinburgh (Image: Anna Deacon)
