View From The Shed by Volunteer Shaun - I AM NOT A TWITCHER (part 2)

I AM NOT A TWITCHER (PART 2)

All woodpeckers share a similar flight pattern. I talked about them in my recent blog, THE HEADBANGER’S BALL. Imagine the hand clap pattern of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and you’ve got the right idea. 

Flap-flap-gliiide.

Flap-flap-gliiide.

Flap-flap-gliiide.

We will, we will, flock you!

It was this flight pattern that I recognised while I was in France. Have I mentioned I was recently there on holiday? The bird to which it belonged flew in front of me and landed against the trunk of a tree, showing the unmistakable silhouette of a woodpecker. But this wasn’t green, nor spotted. It was completely black apart from its piercing lemon eye and red crown, similar to that of our own native species. And it was comparatively huge, almost as big as a crow. No British woody has ever grown close to that size. Regular visitors to mainland Europe might be familiar with the fairly common Black Woodpecker but this was my first sight of one. Tres bon.

This recent French trip was a family holiday just like all my others. We did some walking and some sightseeing but we mostly spent our time just enjoying our (temporarily) local area. The joys of retirement. But of course I had my binoculars with me. 

Seeing foreign birds is as infuriating as it is delightful. Of course it’s great to add new species to my lifelist and see birds that I’d never get the chance to study back home in Yorkshire but there are so many birds that live ‘abroad’ that I cannot even take a wild guess at identifying. Some of them I’ve never even heard of. But it’s always interesting to see something new. If it’s making a noise then perhaps the Merlin app will give me a clue as to what it is. If I’m lucky my wife (the photographer in the family) will grab a quick ID shot so that I might possibly be able to find out what it is when I get to my guide books and websites. But mostly we just have family fun that includes looking at whatever birds we happen to come across.

I duly recorded the Woodpecker in my notebook and spreadsheet, and logged the sighting with the British Trust for Ornithology, Bird Life International and all the other auspicious bodies that gather sightings from me and thousands of other birders worldwide. I like to keep my own records but I also contribute to these societies’ figures. They gather up all of our tiny bits of information to find The Big Picture as far as the avian population of our planet are concerned - how many birds of each species are seen, where they live and where they migrate to and from, that kind of thing. And this data has been collected over a long time now so they can see (and regularly publish) patterns as they occur. Sadly, far too many of these patterns are of the downward kind, showing where birds are in terrible danger of extinction. But the good news is that knowledge is power - if we know where the trouble spots are then we can concentrate our conservation efforts in those places. It’s a classic good news / bad news scenario. And it’s not just holiday birders who provide this information. People habitually recording what they see on their local patch is probably even more important as this provides a regular flow of information about a given area. Any population changes will become easily apparent.

So it’s easy to see what “science” as a whole gets out of my recording what I see on my trips and in my local area, but what about me? What do I get? I’m not really sure. I certainly don’t chase ‘ticks’. I’m not one of those birders that will travel hundreds of miles on the off chance of seeing a bird that they haven’t glimpsed this year. Sure, if there’s a rare sighting just around the corner from me I’ll make the effort to get out of my pyjamas and go have a look, especially if I’m passing. Two examples are the American Ring-Necked Duck that spent a while at Old Moor, and the Snow Bunting that recently delighted birders at RSPB Wombwell Ings, one of my local sites in the Dearne Valley. It took me nine trips to see the Duck and the Snow Bunting managed to elude me on each of my three attempts. But I’m not a twitcher. Oh no. I was in the area, I was working a shift at Old Moor, I was with someone who wanted to go for a look…  the list of ‘valid reasons’ (definitely not excuses) is endless but I continue to use them as justification for my non-twitching birdwatching. 

Birdwatching isn’t something I just do on my holidays. To me it’s a way of life, a connection with nature. It’s an extension of the hunter instinct of tracking an animal down, even if I use tools like Merlin and Birdguide phone apps to point the way. And, even if I don’t like to admit it to myself, there’s an element of the ‘collector’ about it too. I want my list of birds that I’ve seen to be bigger than the guy next door’s. 

What difference does how I refer to myself really make in the grand scheme of things? None whatsoever, obviously. It’s like the changing of ‘Bearded Tit’ to Bearded Reedling’. Or the infamous Scarlet Tanager which is also misnamed - it’s not a Tanager at all but is actually part of the Red Cardinal family. For most of us it’s irrelevant - it certainly is to the birds involved. They don’t care what labels we attach to them and frankly, neither do I. I’m just a big bloke with a big hat who likes watching birds.

But I have still never been on a birdwatching holiday. 

Until my next one (feel free to insert a laughing, winking emoji here if you’d like to).