For me it is in part what you said. Radio birdwatching is actually pretty fun just bumping around the spectrum to see what you can find. There is the communication aspect of course. There is a bit of an emergency preparation aspect to it too. You can also do things like listen to satellites and get images from them or use the ISS as a repeater to get contacts from much further away than usual. It is a very broad hobby to get into. I am the youngest operator by probably 30 years in my area which is an interesting experience but it is cool to be able to operate old analog technology since I also grew up in the internet age (mostly). The entry price point into the hobby is relatively low now. I spent maybe 50 USD when I first started, unfortunately as you get more skills and interest the cost for equipment to do things you wanna do definitely goes up.

Amateur radio is a hobby made up of many technical hobbies. You can basically do everything that utilizes radio waves. Some people just want to talk to others over long distances. Some like to enter contests: competitions where you try to make as many contacts as you can within a few hours or days, often under special rules like using only Morse code or low power. Some build their own antennas and radios. Those are “classics” but there is so much more. You can make contacts via satellite. Some people use planes, meteors, or even the moon as reflectors for radio waves. Some are only interested in the more extreme ends of the radio wave spectrum like low frequencies or microwaves. You can program digital modes, or send chat messages and pictures over radio waves. You can learn how different antennas, weather, and space weather affect radio wave propagation. Some people like to go hiking with their radios and make contacts from remote places, while others do emergency communication training. I have probably forgotten many things; the possibilities are virtually infinite.

My dad was very big into amateur radio in the 70’s and 80’s, so long before things like the internet, mobile phones, etc. He spent a lot of time on the radio with researchers in Antarctica since radio was their only way to communicate back then. My dad had his radio hooked up to our telephone, and he would make collect calls to family members of the people in Antarctica so that they could talk to each other. He’d spend hours on end doing this.

Everyone does the hobby differently, but for me I like to listen to folks talking to each other. You could have a guy in Nebraska chatting it up with someone in Australia just talking about whatever. I know this doesn’t seem as impressive in the age of the internet, but it was essentially an audio version of the internet before the Internet proper existed for the public.

There are also Radio Nets that happen, pretty much just organized gatherings on a repeater for discussion of a specific topic, kind of like a forum. I like to participate in those because it’s very structured and orderly and they cover a lot of interesting topics.

There are yet others who like to do a myriad other things, like see how many hams in other countries they can contact in a day, or learn and communicate in CW/Morse code, or go out to the wilderness/parks to establish contact with someone doing the same thing. The more mechanically inclined might build their own rigs, antennas and shacks and test/use those.

These are just a few activities that I can think of off the top of my head, there’s many, many more. It’s quite a varied hobby!

there are photos of 16 different radios and a couple of antennas, but the one in thumbnail is Elecraft KH-1

Depends on what you want to do. UHF/VHF handheld radio can be had for 20-30, uSDX or QMX type small low power HF radio is closer to 100. You’ll also need battery, antennas (perhaps tuner) and something to put data in and out (headphones and microphone or cw key or audio interface to laptop) (no idea if it’s good but people use it)