I AM NOT A TWITCHER
I’m going to start this week’s blog with some definitions. They’re all perfectly true. They must be, I wrote them myself.
BIRDWATCHER - Someone who watches birds for fun. They go walking in nature with their binoculars, telescopes and notebooks. Most of them are really nice people even if the general public harshly see them as one step up from trainspotters (with apologies to trainspotters).
BIRDER - How birdwatchers refer to themselves.
TWITCHER - The birding equivalent of a trainspotter. Again, most of them are lovely but they have a passion for seeing as many different species as they can. They will travel as far as work, funds and family allow to get a new ‘tick’. This can become an obsession. Some of my best friends fall into this category.
You’ve read the title of this piece so, given the information above, it’s up to you to decide whether it’s true or not. Am I or am I not a “twitcher”?
By definition, a twitcher has to be prepared to travel some distance at a moment’s notice if an unusual bird is seen. Let’s get my frequent holidays out of the way once and for all. I know I talk about them a lot but they’re a big part of my life. I like seeing other parts of the world. I like the landscapes, the people and their languages, and the birds and other animals that live there. I’m fascinated by how these birds find ‘somewhere abroad’ a more attractive place to live than my own homeland - or the other way around. Why would a bird choose to live in, for example, Barnsley rather than Barcelona? Then again, why not?
I’ve never been on a ‘birdwatching’ holiday though. I’m just a birdwatcher who goes on holidays. What's the difference? Well to me, a birdwatching holiday is an organised affair, led by one or more specialised guides. They usually rush from nature reserve to nature reserve, pointing at birds and giving their paying customers a limited amount of time to see and photograph each one before moving on to the next target bird.
This to me is Not Fun. My personal birding holidays are trips to nice areas with people that I love, taking my binoculars with me and hoping to see some new (to me) birds as I pass by. I’ll see far fewer birds than on an organised trip and I’ll be able to identify even less but I’ll enjoy myself a heckovalot more.
So for example, last Spring I went on holiday with my wife. I just happened to read about the Black-Crowned Night Heron that was in the general area we were visiting. So I did the decent thing and asked her permission before taking the 75 mile diversion from our holiday route to try and see it. We got to the nature reserve in question and found, at the very furthest extent of my binocular’s magnification, a blurry grey mass hunkered down deep within a bush.
Was that it? Could it be? Perhaps? And then, glory be, the blur blinked! It was indeed our target bird. We celebrated with a cream tea at the reserve’s cafe and carried on with our non-birding holiday. Fun was had all around and the Night Heron (an uncommon bird in this area and a first for me) continued with his bushy snooze.
You may have seen in the news recently about a bird called a Scarlet Tanager. They usually live on the eastern coast of the Americas but this unfortunate individual has got caught up on some strong transatlantic wind current and has taken the trip of a lifetime. After days looking around in confusion as miles and miles of ocean passed beneath his wings he finally landed - not in the mountain forests of Central America as intended but in Halifax. That’s one heck of a SatNav error. It’s also the first time one has ever been recorded in Yorkshire. All of the ones I’ve seen in guidebooks have all looked something like this.
It’s so unusual to see one in Britain that even our Old Moor Manager, Emma, was invited onto television to talk about it and an excellent job she did too. Naturally lots of people wanted to see it and a small cul-de-sac in West Yorkshire was suddenly filled with more cameras than Downing Street after the latest political fiasco. People waited for days for a glimpse of the bird. Some had travelled from as far as London and Scotland. For them a brief sighting or even a photograph of this megararity was worth the trip and the wait.
Good luck to them but this isn’t my kind of birdwatching. I’d rather be alone or with a dear friend than part of that rugby scrum. And, rare as the bird was, it wasn’t the kind of Scarlet Tanager that I’d want to see anyway. Instead of the gorgeous coloured beauty pictured above, the bird here looks like this.
It is indeed a Scarlet Tanager but an immature male who hasn’t got the plumage of maturity yet. To the layman it suddenly doesn’t seem as exciting as the bird in the breeding plumage from the earlier photo, does it? Does it? For all of the people jostling for space on that cul-de-sac, it definitely does. They’re proper twitchers chasing their dream and, in the dull green bird, appear to have found it, at least until the next rarity turns up. I’m not that dedicated but I am, apparently, more easily pleased. A Robin or a Blue Tit will do for me.
So if I’m not the type to go chasing rare birds around the country (or even the globe) then what kind of birdwatcher am I?
Come back next week for I AM NOT A TWITCHER PART TWO for more thrilling details.
See my weekly RSPB Old Moor blog at "View From the Shed". I usually wear a big hat.