Becoming a Birder by Accident

Birding has taught me to hold my tongue. As soon as I started visiting hides I had two aims: see some birds and don’t piss anybody off. I closed doors quietly behind me, whispered sorry when I dropped things like a coffee cup, book, bag, binoculars or camera which have all happened because sometimes, when you’re trying to be as quiet and considerate as possible, the exact opposite happens.

With any hobby or interest or community comes snobbery. I have been to hundreds of gigs since my early teens and in every queue I’ve been in I have heard strangers trying to outdo each other with where they’ve been and who they’ve seen. This is something that I try to avoid with birding as much as possible. I couldn’t care less if you travelled to space and saw a celestial warbler if you’re telling me to brag. I recently had someone ask me what make my binoculars are (I don’t know) so he could tell me the make and model and cost of his (I didn’t care). It seems to be very easy for people to lose sight of why they’re doing things which means they can become more concerned with what they can tell other people than what they see with their own eyes and how it makes them feel.

The first time I saw a kingfisher on purpose I punched the air. I grinned for an entire day and I absolutely did not shut up about it for several days after. I told everybody. The kingfisher is a bird that transcends interests and I’ve realised that whether people are interested in watching birds either casually, massively or not at all, everybody wants to see a kingfisher at least once in their lives. The thrill of seeing something not only amazingly beautiful but completely unpredictable is very special. We can make habitats that will attract and sustain birds, but we have no say over whether they come to them or if they stay and I absolutely love that. I would choose seeing a common bird in the wild over visiting the rarest bird on earth in a zoo any day of the week. Nature is something that we can influence, and seeing a bird is something that we can hope for, but it’s not something we can control, and we should never want to do this for our own gain.

Since I started watching birds I’ve been keeping lists. I keep a list of the types of bird I’ve seen each year as well as a list of all the birds I’ve seen on purpose since I started going outside. Although I do keep count, I don’t have a target that I want to get to. Seeing a certain number or birds doesn’t motivate me. I’m not interested in ‘ticks’, as they say, but in the experience of birding and how it makes me feel. I’ve read about people who have travelled hundreds of miles to see a rare bird. I think I understand this in some way, but it absolutely doesn’t appeal to me. I am very pessimistic for a start and I would just know that I would hurry along to take part in a twitch and there would be nothing there. I don’t ever want birding to make me feel disappointment.  

After a lot of hours spent looking and noting down what I saw I wanted a more permanent reminder and started taking photos. I’m not a photographer, and I don’t always take my camera with me when I head out to look at birds, but I do enjoy it. I like studying for a long time something that I saw for a few seconds. There's a reason that I don’t always take my camera outside. I once, quite early on, called a blue tit a ‘prick’ because it moved too quickly for me to get the shot I wanted. I was so focused on the photograph that I wasn’t enjoying the beautiful little birds going in and out of their nest box with food to feed their young. I checked myself quickly, probably called myself a prick, turned my camera off, and carried on watching. Stopping to look is always the best decision.