Just a bit of anecdata (observer bias).<p>A lot of, "birdwatchers" I see travelling to remote parts of Scotland and other places in the UK are generally wealthy retirees, with nice kit (Rab clothing, telephoto lenses, VW campervans).<p>Cognitive decline is shown to impact disproportionately on less wealthy people. So is there a trend with economic wealth and outdoor hobbies like birdwatching? I'd hazard a yes.<p>On a side note, the Merlin bird ID app from Cornell University is great.
> <i>"Her team's findings have prompted German health insurance companies – who, among others, initially funded the research project – to invest in setting up bird feeders and viewing areas in more than 400 nursing homes across Bavaria. "It was so effective, it just economised money," Kals says."</i><p>Perhaps we need to provide opportunities for less well off people to access nature? It might have a positive cost-benefit. And design care homes around gardens? 'forest bathing' is apparently often recommended in Japan based on studies of blood pressure and other physical indicators.
> On a side note, the Merlin bird ID app from Cornell University is great.<p>Do you know how it compares to iNaturalist? I'm not a birdwatcher, but I have iNat on my phone and sometimes use it to identify birds, and it seems to do a great job.
I guess in some ways its the opposite of doomscrolling - outdoors & requires patience for the dopamine payoff
If you haven’t seen it, Listers (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-wAqplQAo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-wAqplQAo</a>) provides a great glimpse into what competitive birdwatching looks like. It’s nothing like casual birdwatching.
> Together, these results suggest convergent structural remodeling and functional tuning in service of expert performance across the lifespan<p>Is a long leap from this article's title. Paper:<p><a href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/46/12/e1307252026" rel="nofollow">https://www.jneurosci.org/content/46/12/e1307252026</a>
The BBC article is perhaps truer to the paper:<p><pre><code> Erik Wing, who led this research at Baycrest Academy for Research and Education in Toronto, Canada, compared MRI brain scans from bird experts to those of novices while they identified birds. He found that expert brains were wired differently in regions important for functions like attention, visual perception and visual recognition.
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The study only (?) looked at the brains of birdwatchers, the paper extrapolates the study to make assertions about the brains of active subject experts in general.
I agree, it would be interesting to see if there are some cognitive advantages associated with the "special interests" personality traits, in general.
Nominative determinism strikes again.
I knew it! Those 30 and 40 somethings are always up to something. You never see them, never hear them, but here they are slowing their cognitive decline. They are clever little rascals. They're just like the species they're watching.<p>But I created a set of amazing binoculars with automatic AI age detection via radar for the small friendly price of 39.49$. Looking for a bird watcher? Get the SilentBirdWatchDectector 3000 and slow your cognitive decline at <i>double the rate</i>.<p>Don't watch the birds, watch the bird watchers instead. They may do something interesting.<p>(I'll see myself out...)
Then you watch The Birds (1963) and you wonder if are we birdwatching or are the birds watching?
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