Social media users are flocking to TikTok to join a burgeoning trend for birding videos as the hobby attracts a younger demographic. With the internet ever more cluttered with polarising, shouty and AI content, evidence is emerging of Britons preferring a gentler, more melodic window on the world in the shape of footage of the nation’s feathered friends. TikTok says UK posts of #birdwatching and #birdtok videos have risen by a third over the past three months as users flock to feathered friend content.
The number of #birding posts has risen by 40% in the UK and the global number of posts carrying one of those three hashtags now stands at 1m. A video of Steven, a relatively tame seagull, being fed raw Tesco salmon fillet has more than 52m views. Posts by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have received nearly 9m views over the past year, with a third of those coming from under-24s.
Dedicated birders say the boom is down to the popularity of apps such as Merlin – a kind of Shazam for birdsong – a resurgence in curiosity about the natural world, a desire for analogue hobbies and the power of social media. And there are communities that build off the back of that.” Baddams, who has 300,000 followers, is a TV researcher and one of 3,000 bird “ringers” for the British Trust for Ornithology, who places identification rings around birds to help monitor phenomena such as population changes or migratory patterns. A video on his account explaining the craft of bird ringing has had 7.5m views Baddams admits he has been “shocked” by the scale of interest.
A lot of them are very common birds. It seems like the more common and recognisable the bird, the more interest it gets. People have a relationship to them,” he says.
Birds tagged by Baddams include blackbirds, blue tits and meadow pipits, the latter dubbed a “classic little brown job” – birding jargon for the small, sparrow-like brown birds that tend to be indistinguishable from each other at first glance. Tim Jones, 35, a professional ornithologist from York, says social media has helped spread the word about a hobby that is not normally associated with younger age groups. As well as 48,000 followers on TikTok for videos such as “learn one birdsong this week”, Jones has 210,00 on Instagram under his Begin Birding handle.
Other birding stars on Instagram include Jacob Cobb, who is attempting to find “every bird in the world”, and US birder-singer Bonner Black. That’s really changing now because you’re seeing twentysomethings and teenagers all the time,” says Jones. Nomenclature is also shifting, with the catch-all term of “birding” preferable to “birdwatching” for younger people, while “twitcher” refers to the devotees who will drop everything to attend a rare bird sighting and does not reflect the majority of bird hobbyists, says Jones.
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