From spotting rare birds to soaring free themselves, birdwatchers have a many-splendoured hobby.

Birdwatchers used to be the binocular-wielding nerds of the great outdoors. For reasons only they were nutty enough to know, they snuck around in bushes and swamps to identify gnatcatchers, sapsuckers, hairy woodpeckers, wigeons, thrashers, shrikes, hermits, tits and, indeed, as many representatives of the world's 10,000 or so species of our fine feathered friends as they could spot. American birdwatcher and essayist Ann Taylor, however, flatly rejects the stereotypical image of a birder as a "knobby-kneed simpleton in pith helmet, striped shirt, baggy plaid shorts, argyle socks, and lumpy shoes-a type of eccentric loony."

She has a point. Once eccentric loonies number tens of millions they're no longer eccentric loonies. According to one definition, you're a birder if you either take trips a mile or more from your home to observe birds, or just keep a sharp eye out for them in your backyard, identifying them there. In 2001, 40 million Americans were backyard birders, and 18 million took birding trips. They spent $32 billion US on their hobby a year.

But what, pray, do they get out it? For some, it's the satisfaction of building ever-longer lists of birds they've identified. If you must ceaselessly add to your "lifelist," you are a "twitcher." Every time you identify a new bird and thereby "grip" it for your list, you experience a twitch of excitement. While birding can be as relaxing as watching the sun set over a satiny lake, some twitchers are fiercely competitive-a few insanely so.

But it's not just capturing creatures on a list that hooks others on birdwatching; it's what comes into one's head and heart while just gazing at them.

In his beautiful anthology, The Bedside Book of Birds, Canadian novelist Graeme Gibson says, "Birdwatching can encourage a state of being close to rapture-the forgetfulness that blends the individual consciousness with something other than self. Some people call it 'flow,' others 'enlightenment'... It's only afterwards, when the self returns-with all its familiar baggage-that we recognize the fact that something utterly liberating has occurred."

One in five Americans are birders, and if that's true of Atlantic Canadians, we have more than 460,000 birdwatchers here-as many as the residents of Halifax and Fredericton combined. That's good news for the steering committee of the second Maritimes Breeding Bird Atlas. To help with the first atlas, which appeared in 1992, more than 1,200 birdwatchers volunteered as "atlassers" and, over five years, donated 43,000 hours in the field.

The committee for the atlas hopes that, beginning now and over the next five years, even more birders will volunteer even more hours. Why? A second atlas would answer questions like these: How sharply have our barn swallows declined since 1992? Do whippoorwills still breed here? Are red-bellied woodpeckers moving in? In view of new environmental assessment rules and species-at-risk legislation, as well as heightened public concern for the well-being of wildlife, our governments, corporations and conservationists must have accurate, up-to-date information on bird distribution.

So get out there, all you birders. Veteran twitchers and backyard fledglings alike, do your bit. Become atlassers and who knows, you may even experience a moment that's utterly liberating.

For more information about the second Maritimes Breeding Bird Atlas or to volunteer, go to www.mba-aom.ca/ or call 1-866-528-5275.