Long time ago, birdwatchers were the people who left behind all the technologies and communed with nature, spending time observing and learning. But now most of them look like electronic stores when you meet them in the woods. Except birding binoculars, they also carry one or more digital cameras, i-pods, laser pointers, and much more. Professional alerting services, already popular in the United Kingdom and springing up in the U.S., allow hard-core hobbyists to receive notices of local sightings on their cell phones or BlackBerrys. Some of them even use microphones to record the sounds of birds.
It's become such a high-tech with so many people carrying so much equipment. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 46 million Americans observed, fed or photographed birds in 2001 (the most recent year for which it has data), and they spent $6.01 billion on binoculars, cameras, film, field guides and other stuff.