Superfund sport: birding as polluted nature sport

The authors argue that birding (e.g. Big Day, Big Year, Listing, Twitching, etc.) is a nature sport that is paradoxically enhanced by pollution. They discuss several examples of competitive birders who refine their skills and abilities in complex interplay among nature, pollution, birds, and birding. Birding is a sport whose participants cannot fully succeed without identifying birds in polluted spaces and is made more pleasurable by pollution. The authors’ view is not that pollution is normatively good, but that the fascinating interplay among pollution, birds, and birders puts a macabre shine on an otherwise ugly situation. We animals are embedded in each other’s world – where one man’s trash is another bird’s treasure – for better and for worse.