BIRDING

I first discovered birding when I was about nine years old and have since discovered that it's a hobby that can be pursued just about anywhere (except in Croydon, where there don't seem to be any birds at all). Most of my birding has been done in Thanet, mainly because that's where I live. Thanet is the extreme south-eastern corner of Britain, in the county of Kent. It's normally associated with the bucket'n'spade seaside resorts of Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs, but it's also very well-placed for migrating birds.

This particular page is more or less dedicated to explaining the mysteries of birding to those unacquainted with it, but you can link from here to:

• birding in Thanet
• my own personal life list. Pathetically short but I have no shame.
• A glossary of birders names for the birds. Occasionally creative, though more often tersely functional, crude, or downright pointless.
• birding in Porlock - notes on what you might see around this Somerset village on the edge of Exmoor. Not a lot, to be honest, but the scenery's nice.

Why Be a Birder?

Most people I've met have shown at least some interest in birds and a wish to put a name to them. Birds are, after all, pretty visible, rather mobile, and noticeably vocal - three things that pull attention. Some of them are even quite colourful. There seems to be considerable satisfaction to be gained not only from seeing a bird, but knowing what it is you're looking at. This is what birding's all about.

One of the great things about birding is that you can pursue it in your own way to suit your time and level of interest. Of course, as with any pursuit, there are some idiots out there who will have you believe that there is only One True Way to go about it (which funnily enough just happens to be their way), but you needn't listen to them. There are only two cardinal rules which you really ought to follow:

• The welfare of the birds always comes first. Chances are the bird won't give you much choice, since most of them fly away the minute you start harassing them, but you do have to be careful sometimes, especially in the breeding season. This respect should also extend to other wildlife; if you really care about birds, you care about wildlife in general, so don't go stomping across fragile habitats just to add a tick to your list.
• Respect private property. If you don't, you'll get birders a bad name, which is counter-productive for the hobby and sometimes actively works against conservation.

How To Go Birding

Pretty straightforward, really; you just go out and look at the birds. Obviously there is something to be said for going to places where there are birds (eg; not Croydon), at a time of year and in weather when birds are likely to be around, otherwise you might not see very much. Going out in daylight helps enormously. If your lounge/kitchen window is suitably positioned, though, you needn't even venture out the door. Apart from these basics, there are a number of strategies to choose from.

• Chase after every rarity you hear about in the never-ending expansion of your life list, year list, county list etc. This is known as 'twitching' (US: 'listing'). If this is your chosen modus operandi then you're a twitcher (but whilst all twitchers are birders by default, not all birders are twitchers). There's nothing intrinsically wrong with twitching so long as you don't mind being labelled an obsessive.
• Claim a promising area close to home as your local patch and flog it every day whatever the weather. Something good is bound to turn up eventually. Still pretty obsessive, though.
• Pursue birding as a hobby by going out at weekends etc with the express intention of seeing birds. This means you get to derive your aesthetic pleasure from seeing the birds themselves, but not necessarily the places where they congregate. Many birds have no scenic taste whatsoever and actually prefer concrete reservoirs, rubbish tips, sewage farms etc. 'Pretty' places are frequently next to birdless, especially if the weather is nice.
• As above, but only going to nice places in congenial weather. People who do this are known as 'dudes'; this is a derogatory term invented by twitchers, but as far as I'm concerned there's nothing inherently wrong with being a dude and all the more power to them. They might not see that many birds, but they enjoy them all the more when they do.
• Develop birding as an adjunct to the primary business of pleasant weekend picnics in the countryside (weather permitting), walking the dog, summer holidays etc. The birds are largely incidental, but you can still get your fun from knowing what they are, admiring their plumage etc. Not the best way to rack up a huge life list, but if this is your approach then listing is hardly your priority.
• Stick a peanut feeder up outside your kitchen window and enjoy the blue tits. (NB: Do not put out food in the breeding season - parent birds are stupid enough to force-feed their chicks on bread and peanuts and choke them.)

Equipment

You can blow enormous sums of money on birding, or you can do it on the cheap. By and large, birding represents excellent value for money - one pair of binoculars and a couple of books can set you back as little as fifty quid whilst setting you up for a lifetime's enjoyment.

• Binoculars - strictly speaking, not absolutely essential, but not having a pair of bins puts you at a severe disadvantage. You can blow hundreds on a top-of-the-range brand, but if you're just starting and not sure how keen you're going to be it makes more sense to buy cheap. I got my current pair for twenty quid in a high street store; they're not optically perfect, but they do the job. Anything in the 8x30 to 10x50 range is perfectly adequate, but always try before you buy to make sure you can see through them and there's no colour-fringing, double-imaging etc.
• Telescope - very useful for seabirds, wildfowl, waders and anything that's not too mobile and a long way off. 20x to 50x is the optimum magnification range, but higher mags let in less light. A zoom lens is useful for scanning flocks and then homing in on something interesting. Scopes are a bit pricey so it goes without saying that you shouldn't buy one until you're sure you're keen enough to warrant the investment. Also, if you get a scope you really need a tripod to go with it, which means more weight to lug around; a serious consideration if your itinerary involves a ten-mile hike through cloying mud.
• Field Guide - A book that tells you what birds you're looking at. Absolutely indispensible, especially if you're just starting out. Make sure it includes all the birds you're likely to see in your chosen birding area, in all the common plumages. Avoid photo-guides that give you one fuzzy photo per species; paintings do a surprisingly better job of capturing the overall 'feel' of a bird. For British birds I particularly recommend The Shell Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland, if you can find it, for the huge amount of info it packs into a small space. It also puts all the rarities into a special section at the back so you're less tempted to think you've found something special. (Sad fact of birding life: If you're down to a choice between two species, and one is described as 'extremely common' and the other as 'very rare vagrant', then chances are you're looking at the common one. And if there's two thousand of the critters wheeling overhead then, sorry, but it really is the common one.)
• Notebook - Use this to make a note of what you've seen, take descriptions of birds you couldn't identify in the field, along with date, place, weather etc. Proper Birders diligently keep their notebook up to date. I never have done.

Birding Slang

As with almost any hobby, birding has developed its own peculiar argot which can mystify the uninitiated. Hopefully this section will make things clearer. (Not that you absolutely have to know any of it.)

• Tick - a species new to any of the various lists you might keep, as in 'year tick' (new for the year; you get lots of these in January), 'British tick' (you've seen it abroad, but not in Britain), trip tick (new for whatever excursion you're currently undertaking), garden tick, shed roof tick etc. Not that you have to keep any lists at all, but most birders do.
• Lifer - a species that you have never seen before in your life anywhere in the world ever. In other words, a tick for your life list.
• Megatick - an extremely good tick, by virtue of the bird being rare and probably either very colourful or awesomely huge to boot. A good tick not just for you, but for any birder, even the most jaded of veterans.
• Crippler - a megatick, which leaves you emotionally crippled by its beauty/size/whatever as well as its extreme rarity. (Not all megaticks are cripplers, since a lot of very rare birds are actually small and grotty with no potential to cripple whatsoever).
• Sibe - a bird that normally lives in Siberia but has got lost somewhere along the way and pitched down in some grotty housing estate. Usually small and uncolourful, but rare.
• Sum plum - summer plumage. A lot of rare (and not-so-rare) birds are only likely to be seen in Britain on their autumn migration, by which time they're normally in their dowdy winter plumage, so getting one in sum plum is a bonus.
• LBJ - a Little Brown Job. An amazing number of birds are small and brown or some other unexciting colour, even in sum plum, and they all look almost exactly like at least a dozen other species. Female or immature birds are quite likely to be LBJs, and identification can be tricky even for the experts.
• BOP - Bird of Prey. Although many BOPs are big and impressive, they aren't always readily identifiable, so this generic acronym can come in handy. Many BOPs never get identified at all.
• Twitcher - obsessive list-keeping birder who goes after rare birds found by other people. Twitchers might cross half the country overnight to see one tatty brown thing sitting half a mile away on a bleak expanse of mud. Twitchers invariably have huge lists that only impress other twitchers. Surprisingly, they are not always good at identifying birds, because they leave all that tedious business to other birders. From twitcher you also get the verb to twitch, to go out with the deliberate intent of seeing one particular rarity you've been told about, and you don't need to be a dedicated twitcher to do this.
• Dude - a casual birder who prefers pleasant surroundings and nice weather. Usually satisfied with quite common birds that would drive a twitcher insane with boredom. Dudes tend not to be too hot on identification either, but on the plus side they keenly enjoy the birds they do see and not just as ticks on a list. Nothing to be ashamed of. (However, there are some irritating dudes who think they know far more than they do and run up lots of stringy records (see 'stringy')).
• Birder - anyone inbetween obvious twitcher and obvious dude. Keen but not obsessive, well genned up on identification and stuff, and well acquainted with the local hot birding sites. Birders find the rarities for twitchers, and are generally happy to help dudes with the LBJs (qv).
• Dip out on - fail to see a particular bird, usually one you've gone out to twitch. It was there, but you dipped out on it. The bird in question may then be referred to as a dip.
• Grip someone off - if you dip out on a bird and someone else doesn't, then he or she has gripped you off. This usually happens through the vagaries of chance (you turned up too late, went to the wrong turnip field, whatever) but the intense rivalry of twitchers can lead to them intentionally gripping each other off, through deliberate misinformation, suppression of information, or even scaring the bird away before anyone else can see it. Petty, maybe, but it has been known to happen. (Though knowledge of some rarities is suppressed for more practical reasons, such as to keep armies of twitchers away from private land or the breeding sites of vulnerable species.)
• Stringy - suspect identification. A claimed rarity that turns out be something common. Birders that do this on a regular basis get tagged as stringers. Sometimes this derogative label is justified, other times it isn't.
• Seawatching - sitting for hours and hours on a windswept clifftop, beach or harbour wall, eyes glued to the sea in the hope that something interesting will fly by eventually. Usually tedious beyond description, but the only way to see some of the more ocean-bound species away from their inaccessible breeding grounds. It helps to have a good telescope, since the birds might be miles away (literally, sometimes), and someone to talk to is a good idea unless you really want to go mad. The only rule of thumb with seawatching is that it only stands to be worthwhile if the weather is truly foul (but foul weather doesn't necessarily mean productive seawatching). Strictly for the dedicated.
• Vis mig - visible migration. Most birds migrate to some extent, and it's one of the most attractive things about birding that almost anything can turn up almost anywhere. Migrants are often found after they've pitched down overnight, but you can also see them actually on the move. There's something rather exciting about this overtly purposeful movement, even when the birds in question are really quite common. It's not every day you see a woodpecker bounding over the waves or a big BOP (qv) flapping over the local shopping centre.

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