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birding v's twitching (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter wheatley
- Start date
Larry Lade
Moderator
Some more!
Hi Wheatley,
This has been discussed at some lenght in a previous thread. It may be more than "you bargined for" but you can look at the posts on this subject at:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=9434&highlight=birder+twitcher
P.S. I guess my age is showing, duh... I found this thread (which I started) while doing some more searching of the Forum.
Wheatley, I had the same question about birders/twitchers some time ago and asked for help in determining what the difference was.
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=7607&highlight=birder+twitcher
Hi Wheatley,
This has been discussed at some lenght in a previous thread. It may be more than "you bargined for" but you can look at the posts on this subject at:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=9434&highlight=birder+twitcher
P.S. I guess my age is showing, duh... I found this thread (which I started) while doing some more searching of the Forum.
Wheatley, I had the same question about birders/twitchers some time ago and asked for help in determining what the difference was.
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=7607&highlight=birder+twitcher
Last edited:
Larry Lade
Moderator
More on twitching - twitchers
Another thread you might find interesting is below. There are probaby more if you want to do a little searching of the Forum.
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=2032&highlight=bird+watcher+birder
Another thread you might find interesting is below. There are probaby more if you want to do a little searching of the Forum.
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=2032&highlight=bird+watcher+birder
black52bird
Registered User
But just for a quick reply,
A birder is someone who is just as happy watching the behaviour of the blackbirds in their garden as going on trips looking for new birds, whereas a twitcher is someone who is only interested in seeing new species, and will often go to great lengths to do so (e.g. hiring a private aeroplane to fly to Fair Isle from south Devon to see a Russian vagrant which has never been to the UK before).
Best
David
A birder is someone who is just as happy watching the behaviour of the blackbirds in their garden as going on trips looking for new birds, whereas a twitcher is someone who is only interested in seeing new species, and will often go to great lengths to do so (e.g. hiring a private aeroplane to fly to Fair Isle from south Devon to see a Russian vagrant which has never been to the UK before).
Best
David
Reader
Well-known member
black52bird said:
Have to disagree to a point David. I know this subject has been done to death many times before but I still think that the word Twitcher invokes all the wrong ideas of this type of birder.
For sure there are always the extremists in any hobby, and our hobby is no different. It certainly does have its extreme element but I would like to class myself as a Twitcher also. I have a pager and do like to travel to see different birds. I do keep lists and like to add to them at every opportunity, finances willing, but I also love to just watch birds. I will feel equally at home watching birds in my garden and popping into the local reserves to see what is about.
For me Twitching gves you an adrenalin buzz. Its the thrill of the chase. A bird is reported that you want to see and you get into your car ready to travel the short or long distance required to get to that bird and all the time you are wondering if the bird will still be there when you get there. You are constantly monitoring the pager to make sure the bird is still being seen and when you do get there, and the bird is still showing, then its a big "YES" and a sigh of relief that you have not had a wasted journey.
It is at this point whether you see it or not, that sometimes determines the extreme twitcher. If they have seen the bird there is a good chance that they will just drive home. For me going to any site is a platform for touring the area to see what else is about. Doing it the way I do also gets me to see parts of the country I may not have been to before and reserves I have never visited, although that doesn't happen too much now as there is very little in Britain that I haven't seen.
I think you will find that a vast majority of Twitchers fall into the same catergory as me so I wouldn't define a Twitcher as only being interested in seeing new species as I feel that that is not a true picture.
Elizabeth Bigg
Addicted member
Unfortunately many media people misuse the name twitcher, applying it to anyone who shows the slightest interest in birds.
James Lowther
Well-known member
I always feel the more reaonable comparison is between birding and twitching, as the idea that you either do one or the other to the exclusion of everything else is pretty silly really.
columbidae
Well-known member
I would venture to say that nearly all twitchers are also birders, but that by no means are nearly all birders also twitchers. I am definitely a birder, but, although I have "twitched" once or twice, I do not consider myself a "twitcher".
Reader
Well-known member
pduxon said:
Hi Pete
That's possibly an over simplification. You don't know what they do when not on the chase. Who knows why they leave the site straight away without going anywhere else. It's beyond me but then birding takes on all forms. You never know, once back home, they might be good local birders (hard to imagine I know.
There is another type of birder I find hard to work out. A single County man. I know plenty of birders that will not cross a boundary line no matter what bird was there. In Staffordshire there is a very well known site called Drayton bassett. It is near to Drayton Manor Park. Most of it is in Staffs but a small part of it is in Warwickshire. I have seen people that have known a rare bird on the Warwickshire side but wouldn't walk the few hundred yards to go for it just because it's on the wrong side of the borderline. Strange, but if that pulls their strings who am I to argue.
I would never decry any form of birding (unless it is to the detrement of the birds themselves - or the habitat they live in).
Jasonbirder
Jason-occasional-twitcher
Sometimes a rare bird will turn up in the most god forsaken place
Rose-coloured Starlings in peoples gardens are an excellent example - but there are many others! Something like that i`ll turn straight round after seeing the bird and go somewhere else!
Jane Turner
Well-known member
I'm bored tonight.. I think I'll write one of those questionnaire thingies as long as everyone promises to be amused by it.. I don't want death threats
black52bird
Registered User
Yes but....
Yes but....as we all know, there are the hardline twitchers who will cut down undergrowth where some poor exhausted vagrant bird is attempting to rest and feed, or harry the thing to death. There it's the tick on the life-list (and, of course, we all like that) which is more important than seeing and enjoying the bird. I have always tended to use the term in a - for me - derogatory sense - as someone who isn't really interested in the birds themselves. Like train spotters who just collect the numbers rather than actually know about the engines on which they appear..... You may be interested to know that the new (2003) Collins English Doctionary says " twitcher: a bird-watcher who tries to spot as many rare varieties as possible".
It is also to speculate on the etymology of the term, which apocryphally is because these people would arrive at some bleak piece of industrial wasteland to see the Siberian Rubythroat and, after a cold journey of several hours through the night would arrive at dawn 'twitching' with exhaustion. Any comments on that?
Best
David
Yes but....as we all know, there are the hardline twitchers who will cut down undergrowth where some poor exhausted vagrant bird is attempting to rest and feed, or harry the thing to death. There it's the tick on the life-list (and, of course, we all like that) which is more important than seeing and enjoying the bird. I have always tended to use the term in a - for me - derogatory sense - as someone who isn't really interested in the birds themselves. Like train spotters who just collect the numbers rather than actually know about the engines on which they appear..... You may be interested to know that the new (2003) Collins English Doctionary says " twitcher: a bird-watcher who tries to spot as many rare varieties as possible".
It is also to speculate on the etymology of the term, which apocryphally is because these people would arrive at some bleak piece of industrial wasteland to see the Siberian Rubythroat and, after a cold journey of several hours through the night would arrive at dawn 'twitching' with exhaustion. Any comments on that?
Best
David
David: More or less right. Here is a letter from "British Birds", 76/8 (Aug 1983), p.353:
"'Twitcher' is actually a John Izzard-Bob Emmett word which was coined in the middle 1950s to describe our good friend Howard Medhurst, alias 'The Kid'.
"Birdwatching transport was very much a two-wheeled affair in those days. John Izzard and his girlfriend, Sheila, rode a Lambretta, whilst Howard rode pillion on my Matchless. The Lambretta had a unique luxury built into it: a back-warming, lap-warming dog, 'Jan', which used to travel jammed between John and Sheila. There was no such creature comfort on the Matchless; on arrival at some distant destination, Howard would totter off the back of my machine and shiveringly light up a cigarette. This performance was repeated so regularly up and down the country that it became synonymous with good birds, and, as we all felt a slight nervous excitement at the uncertainty involved in trying to see a particular bird, it became a standing joke, and John and I would act out a nervous twitch to match Howard's shiverings. This led us to describe a trip to see a rare bird as 'Being on a twitch'. Inevitably, this led to the term 'twitcher'. It was our association with the Portsmouth Group in the New Forest that extended the term into more general use. In the late 1960s, it became a derogatory term to describe unscrupulous tick-hunters (and as far as I am concerned it still is). It is pretty safe to say, however, that Howard Medhurst was - in the nicest possible way - the original twitcher.
"R. E. Emmett"
"'Twitcher' is actually a John Izzard-Bob Emmett word which was coined in the middle 1950s to describe our good friend Howard Medhurst, alias 'The Kid'.
"Birdwatching transport was very much a two-wheeled affair in those days. John Izzard and his girlfriend, Sheila, rode a Lambretta, whilst Howard rode pillion on my Matchless. The Lambretta had a unique luxury built into it: a back-warming, lap-warming dog, 'Jan', which used to travel jammed between John and Sheila. There was no such creature comfort on the Matchless; on arrival at some distant destination, Howard would totter off the back of my machine and shiveringly light up a cigarette. This performance was repeated so regularly up and down the country that it became synonymous with good birds, and, as we all felt a slight nervous excitement at the uncertainty involved in trying to see a particular bird, it became a standing joke, and John and I would act out a nervous twitch to match Howard's shiverings. This led us to describe a trip to see a rare bird as 'Being on a twitch'. Inevitably, this led to the term 'twitcher'. It was our association with the Portsmouth Group in the New Forest that extended the term into more general use. In the late 1960s, it became a derogatory term to describe unscrupulous tick-hunters (and as far as I am concerned it still is). It is pretty safe to say, however, that Howard Medhurst was - in the nicest possible way - the original twitcher.
"R. E. Emmett"
And for an example of the passions it can stir:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=10922&page=1&pp=40
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=10922&page=1&pp=40
Adey Baker
Member
I wonder what was meant by 'unscrupulous' tick-hunters?
If you travelled all night to see a rare bird but had scruples you were OK, apparently - you weren't a twitcher!
Of course, there's a practicality to all of it in that there was, and probably still is, a perception that a rare migrant, being off-course, will be gone early in the morning as soon as it has found its bearings again. Thus travelling a great distance through the night is the only way to stack the odds in your favour if the bird is a couple of hundred miles away.
Getting up at some unearthly hour to hear the dawn chorus or catch the wader-roost at high tide is OK, but doing the same for a rare bird isn't.
In all cases travelling in the dark is good economy of time as far as bird-watching is concerned - all the hours of daylight are thus available to you to indulge in whatever form of birding suits you best.
As for trainspotters not knowing much about the locos that the numbers are on - I think they're even more obsessive than birders and can tell you any detail you would like to know. A recent article in our local weekly newspaper mentioned some of the interest shown in the local railway line and some of the trains seen along it. One reader wrote to the reporter giving details of numbers, names, times etc., of all the trains that were diverted along our line from the West Coast Mainline onto the Midland Main Line at the time of the infamous Harrow and Wealdstone crash - that was in October 1952!
If you travelled all night to see a rare bird but had scruples you were OK, apparently - you weren't a twitcher!
Of course, there's a practicality to all of it in that there was, and probably still is, a perception that a rare migrant, being off-course, will be gone early in the morning as soon as it has found its bearings again. Thus travelling a great distance through the night is the only way to stack the odds in your favour if the bird is a couple of hundred miles away.
Getting up at some unearthly hour to hear the dawn chorus or catch the wader-roost at high tide is OK, but doing the same for a rare bird isn't.
In all cases travelling in the dark is good economy of time as far as bird-watching is concerned - all the hours of daylight are thus available to you to indulge in whatever form of birding suits you best.
As for trainspotters not knowing much about the locos that the numbers are on - I think they're even more obsessive than birders and can tell you any detail you would like to know. A recent article in our local weekly newspaper mentioned some of the interest shown in the local railway line and some of the trains seen along it. One reader wrote to the reporter giving details of numbers, names, times etc., of all the trains that were diverted along our line from the West Coast Mainline onto the Midland Main Line at the time of the infamous Harrow and Wealdstone crash - that was in October 1952!
Adey Baker
Member
Bluetail said:
And if you haven't followed the directions given to you exactly you can always claim to have 'missed the turn in the dark.'
