The presence of so many once-rare birds, in Britain, has caused me to think.
My engagement with twitching was brief and the whole business of visiting reserves troubles me now, in a way I had not imagined. I think of a future occurrence: a scenario in which I am seated within a hide and recognise an obscure rarity; one that’s tricky to identify and easily overlooked. The urge is there to tell those beside me, but also an understanding of the game. I do, though, announce the presence of let’s say a ‘first for Britain’ and trigger a chain of events that leads to a road fatality. Were that to transpire, what would he, or she, have died for? But not to share such a find with fellow enthusiasts still seems churlish and would strip away much pleasure. Crazy though it may seem and wonderful though birds are, I no longer wish to encounter rare ones and avoid looking at common birds, sometimes, in case I might.
This is not a condemnation of twitchers. Most are skilled and responsible motorists. But there is, essentially, a competitive core and desire to get there in time; and twitching is, therefore, an obscure form of motor-sport on Britain’s highways. It was for me and it will be for others; and so I do not regret moving on.
At the age of perhaps eight, or nine, my interest in ornithology was embryonic, but thumbing my father’s Collins field guide helped it to thrive. The more unusual species held, for me, an almost mystical quality. Photographic guides were fewer than today and so I knew them from representations, by fine-artists, including Basil Ede and Charles Tunnicliffe. They were celebratory works; intended, surely, to emphasise colour and add an extra layer of drama; and the buzz, for me, was to imagine how they would appear, in the flesh, or more accurately, of course, in the plumage. The thrill, then, of seeing paintings brought to life would become an elusive and longed for prize. Of course, birds don’t look as they do in such paintings. Sometimes they seem better, sometimes worse, but never the same. I recall standing in the grounds of Norfolk’s Castle Acre priory; having been dropped there in order that my father could visit someone in a nearby village. Goldfinches were present; excitingly so,...
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