To bird solo or with others?

Do you, like me, bend the corner of a page on which you find a sentence or a passage that "speaks to you"? I have bent many corners while reading The Ardent Birder: On the Craft of Birdwatching by Todd Newberry & Gene Holtan and have reached only page 46 of the 208-page paperback book.

The first bit to catch my attention is this, particularly after reading a lively debate about social birding on the youngbirder listserv:

To me, companionship in birding is vital. When I started watching birds some sixty years ago, John Kieran had just written in Footnotes on Nature, "It probably is true that a man sees more things and makes more searching observations in the field when he is alone, but there is a virtue in companionship that makes up for any decrease in the supply of clinical notes. A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled."

What do you think about birding alone and with others? Which is more valuable to you?