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Worst thing to happen to you when Birding? (1 Viewer)

Himalaya

Well-known member
I was going to a birding spot in Islamabad, Pakistan with 2 friends whilst recently visiting family there when we were approached by a man with a Gun and told to hand our cameras over. He took 3 cameras and a pair of binoculars - I had a Nikon P900 worth approx £500 and £200 binoculars newly bought. total cost was easily £2500 worth. However, one camera - the cheapest was recovered after 3 days when it was put on an internet site. We got the seller to send photos of the camera to a friend who acted as customer. We notified the police and with lucky we got that camera back - the seller was not the gunman.

Worst thing was the loss of the memory card!
 
I was birding by myself in a park outside of Shanghai on a free weekend before some business meetings when I was hit by a severe attack of vertigo. I eventually flagged down a park vehicle who called for an ambulance. They took me to "Shanghai #7 People's Hospital." Eventually, I was able to reach a co-worker, who put me in touch with our travel insurance company and got me transferred to a private hospital where I stayed for 5 days.

Two days later I flew home having never had a chance to take care of the business I travelled for.
 
I was walking down the side of a gorge in Crete when the path collapsed. I was happily sliding down the slope when one foot got caught in a tangle of roots. This spun me through 180 degrees and flipped me over, using my left knee as a pivot. Took three years for the tendons to heal. Birding with a stick was fine, once I'd got used to juggling bins, stick and camera. ;-)
 
Dipping, happend to me a couple of times :eek!:

Nothing serious happend so far, gladly. Perhaps the most frightening thing was to fall in a pig trap in Vietnam. I was following a narrow path and suddenly found myself on eye-level with the ground in a very narrow trench that has been dug across the path, I suppose to catch wild boars. Luckily it wasn't fitted with these sharp bamboo poles that we all know from Vietnam war movies. So I was just shocked for a few seconds before bursting out in laughter. Glad there was no one around to laugh at me.
 
Just back from Venezuela and was told by our guide of a client who fell in to a disused but still plenty full, sceptic tank......clothing had to be burned, must have been horrible.

Don't want to tempt fate by saying that nothing bad has happened to me as I had that conversation regarding lost baggage. In 30 years of travelling I never lost a bag but having related that story a week ago, bingo, step forward Lufthansa, crap food and a tendancy too put bags on the wrong flight! At least it was on the homeward leg so not too bad, think I've been very lucky on all fronts really.

A small car accident in Africa was my most serious incident but it could have been a lot worse. A female sucide bomber killed 15 people on the Colombo Fort railway station platform where I had been stood just three hours previous.


Andy
 
I remember cycling round the castle when, just off the path, I dissappeared into a big hole over the handle bars and the bike fell on top of me!! Fortunately, nothing broken - me or equipment...
 
I was on a Naturetrek trip in South Luangwa. Lovely fine morning, both Land Rovers proceeded in convoy into the park, along various tracks and eventually to a spur where after a quick check for lurking park staff, we were permitted to debus for some on foot birding close to the vehicles. We were warned not to get close to the nearby river and lake banks because of the crocs - and hippos, one of which had already scared the hell out of us bursting from the bushes just in front of our L/R as it made its panicked way back to the safety of water.

One vehicle, full of mammal watchers (which, then, didn't include birder me - how times change!) then went off in search of furballs, while the rest of us carried on birding. Our drivers, however, had changed over from their original mounts in arranging this split of the party, and when we came to mount up our new driver discovered the other one still had the vehicle key in his pocket, so we were stranded out in the park! Naturally we had no means of contacting either our companion vehicle or the park HQ. The script for a Michael Crichton film was unfolding with us in it...

This left the only options being to stay put or walk out. Our leader asked if any of us would like to walk out with him, but we all preferred the apparent security of the vehicle. To add insult to injury the spur he'd brought us along was a long peninsula, at the end of which was a very narrow, shallow channel to the next solid ground, with a ranger station only a couple of km beyond - but a 10km hike back round the track in order to stay on dry land.

Our noble leader went and surveyed the banks and the water surface, but one step too close and several splashes heralded eager crocs preparing for his crossing, so he gave us a wry grin and set off the other way. We carried on birding, though taking much more care than before to keep our lines of retreat to the Land Rover short and clear. We really did feel quite vulnerable!

Needless to say every rustle of the bushes resulted in huge blasts of adrenaline and people making for the car at Mach 3! Personally I think we would have been wise to reinstall the roof hatches, too - normally a couple of us sat on the roof with our legs dangling in as we drove around. Any passing Lion could have just jumped onto and into the vehicle even if we all made it inside.

We had to wait about an hour and a half before a beaming team arrived in a cloud of dust to rescue us. No real dramas then: but we had seen a couple of groups of elephants pass near, and when Rob got back he confessed that all the way back to the ranger station he kept finding loads and loads of Lion scat all over the place and he was quite glad he only had himself to worry about.

Throughout the remainder of the trip any proposal to split the party led to full interrogation as to the whereabouts of car keys.

John
 
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Probably the worst thing to happen to me was on a guided tour in the Cairngorms a year ago. We'd parked at the car park by the ski centre up on Cairn Gorm itself, and on the ridge alongside was a spot were people had been putting food out for Snow Buntings in order to get good photos in perfect sunlight.

We had to scale a small set of stone steps to get up there, but the ski centre staff hadn't cleared them and they were covered in thick snow. The birds had briefly flown off, so our guide called for us to leave to look for other birds elsewhere and said we'd return a bit later. Although I stepped down very carefully, I lost grip on the ice concealed under the snow (our airline getting up to Scotland had lost my luggage, so I'd had to buy some cheap temporary walking boots in the meantime) and fell down the steps. Luckily I was only bruised, but a few minutes later I realised I'd cracked my brand new camera against the stone. I was also lucky that the camera damage was only cosmetic, although it's definitely not as weatherproof as it originally was.

Just to add extra disappointment, when we returned the Snow Buntings were back but the sun had dropped enough that the feeding station was now in deep shadow and my photos were very disappointing.

I suppose I can count myself lucky that no serious injury or danger has come my way yet though.
 
Many years ago, when I was a student, I spent the summer vacation hitch-hiking around America in search of birds. I was in Nebraska, on my way back to New York, when I was given a lift by a driver who was towing another car. We were coming in to North Platte when a car pulled out right in front of us. We swerved to avoid it but the car being towed kept going in a straight line. This resulted in our car ending up on the other side of the road pointing the other way and on its side. I was lying on my side with a foot caught under the seat. I was just putting my glasses back on when the driver shouted "We're on fire!". A nano-second later I was upright and trying to open the door which was above me. Unfortunately doors on American cars are about a foot thick and weigh a ton and I couldn't move it. A couple of seconds later, miraculously, the door opened and hands grabbed me and pulled me out. We ran away from the car and ten seconds later there was an explosion and a sheet of flame rose into the air. The guys who rescued me and the driver were working in a nearby garage, saw what was happening, and saved our lives.

I traveled another 100 miles that day and ended the day sleeping in a field. The following morning, still in the sleeping bag, I put on my glasses and saw that the sky was full of gulls - thousands of them in skeins that stretched from horizon to horizon. They were Franklin's Gulls on their way to South America. I traveled about 300 miles that day and every time I looked at the sky there they were. I think the whole world population of Franklin's Gulls had chosen that late September day to fly south. Life went on.
 
A number of years ago whilst doing VSO in Nepal I had the chance to attend a meeting of Forestry Department staff at Chitwan along with some other volunteers, one of whom was also a birder. So one spare afternoon we took the opportunity, with a couple of others, to hire a local guide (in hindsight probably more accurately a local teenager) to go into the National Park on foot (again, probably not authorised, legal or wise - but we were all young once).

Whist trying to track down an unidentified woodpecker in a wooded area the 'guide' indicated we should keep quiet & join him. He then pointed out the fairly close but difficult to make out outline of an Indian Rhinoceros. As he moved out of the way to let us all peer through the dense undergrowth there was a squeaking noise from behind us. I barely had time to wonder what it was when the guide urgently said "Quick, up a tree, NOW!" I looked round almost instantly and saw he was already well up the nearest tree. The four of us briefly looked at each other then chose our tree & struggled up. It was then that he announced the noise was from a baby Rhino and we had inadvertently strayed between it and its mother - not a good idea. After a bit of rustling in the undergrowth they apparently found each other and wandered off and we clambered down from our respective perches and left the area.

It took me a long time to see a Rhino properly; this time from the safety of the back of an elephant.
 
seems funny now but some years back I hired a cycle in Majorca and went off birding with scope & tripod over my shoulder in 35 degree heat.
A Spanish woman decided to knock me off the bike whilst I was stationery on a well marked cycle lane close to Albufura Marshes and then turning the car around, reversed her car over the rear wheel completely destroying the bike.
I was fortunately unhurt and said woman drove off with no more than a hand-wave from her driver's window. Tripod was now a bi-pod though :-(
Worse of all was I had to drag the bike back in the heat of the day to the hire shop which was around three miles away and try to explain my unlikely story to a bemused shop assistant.
 
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