Nikon Birding Catalog

Recently I attended a local birding festival. It wasn't huge but it did attract upwards of 1,000 people a day and lasted for two days. It was quite fun and I enjoyed myself immensely.

On the first day I attended a talk about Digiscoping and Birding Optics (for those who don't know, digiscoping is using one's digital camera to take pictures through a scope). The talk had an audience of maybe 25-30 people. Looking around the room I noticed that at least 75% of the people were female. The talk was given by a sales rep from Nikon and after the talk I wandered down to their booth to check out their scopes and pick up a catalog.

When I got home I browsed through the catalog a bit and something immediately jumped out at me that had nothing to do with the quality of their binoculars and scopes: there were no women in their catalog. None at all. This was their "Sports and Birding" catalog, very specific. Most of the birders I know are female, over half of the birding festival attendees were female (the audience composition of the Digiscoping talk was just one example) and yet the birding catalog had no women in it.

There were lots of men, though. Manly men! Trekking across prairies with huge pieces of camera and optics equipment across their shoulders. Climbing trees to band owls with huge birding scopes strapped to their backs. Paddling through marshes with a whole assortment of cameras, binoculars and scopes in their canoes. The catalog had profiles of three male birders and scientists about how they used Nikon optics and cameras in their work. Well, bully for them.

I guess Nikon doesn't think that birding is something women do. Or maybe Nikon just doesn't want to be associated with "feminine" things so it has decided to ignore all the female birders out there using their products. Maybe "birding" isn't manly enough so it has to be the sport and birding catalog and heaven forbid anyone be shown in their catalog just casually watching birds from a porch. Oh, no, birding is X-TREME! Birding takes you into danger, birding equipment has to be able to fight battles!

All the birds featured, as well, were raptors. No warblers, no seagulls and certainly not any of those teeny, poofy, non-manly little brown birds. Birding is dangerous, didn't you know? And therefore birding is done by Manly Men with their big, long birding scopes. *cough* Compensating, much? *cough*