Ornithologist

Popular culture is full of famous birds. There’s Big Bird, for instance. There’s Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” And, of course, there are those adorable penguins from “March of the Penguins.”

An Ornithologist, however, is not concerned with reading about birds in poems or watching them on television. Instead, Ornithologists are interested in observing them in their natural habitat.

Although that makes you — an Ornithologist — a professional bird-watcher, you’re more than a hobbyist with a camera and binoculars. A Zoologist who specializes in the study of birds, you’re a Scientist who’s paid to observe, identify and classify different species of birds, including everything from finches, larks and cranes to eagles, puffins and pigeons.

Employed most often by zoos, museums, aviaries and universities, you spend some days traveling to natural bird habitats, others observing birds in captivity and still others studying birds in laboratories. Always, however, your job is studying birds’ biology, physiology, ecology and behavior in order to learn more about how they live, learn and relate — both to one another and to their environment.

A Conservationist, you’re deeply concerned about birds’ endangerment and extinction. Although your ornithological predecessors shot, trapped and dissected birds so they could study them, you therefore prefer to study live specimens in order to simultaneously learn about and protect them.

Because research careers are hard to come by, you often will find work as an Author or Professor, writing about birds or teaching about them. Always, though, you’re one of very few people who can use the term “feathered friend” and mean it!