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Twitching scene in the US (1 Viewer)

Wayland

Wayland

Well-known member
Just curious to know what the twitching scene is like in the US. Obviously, here in the UK it is a big deal, where you can easily get dozens of birders at a good twitch. As an example, in the spring I found a Wood Sandpiper on my local patch and within 20 minutes of putting the news out five birders had arrived, for what is only a scarce (not rare) and regular migrant.

How does this compare with the US? Do you get many birders at a twitch? How far are people prepared to travel, and spend? Do you only bird "in state", etc.

Interested to know the comparisons.
 
It depends on the rarity of the species.

We had a Black-backed Oriole (a Mexican species) here in eastern PA a couple years ago. I met people there on the second day it was there from as far as Michigan which is 600 miles away by car, and I am aware that people did come from California during the time the bird was present. According to an article in the ABA "Birder's Guide" over 1800 people signed the guestbook while the bird was there. And that was for a species that many people felt wasn't a true vagrant, so they didn't bother to go.

Personally, I don't twitch much more than 2-3 hours' drive, unless it's in New England (where I have family and can combine a visit). OTOH, I have friends who drove 20 hours to Florida for a twitch, slept in the car, and then drove back the next day for a first American record. I also keep a PA list, but it's really just in the eastern half of the state, but many people will twitch from one side of the state to the other for their state list - a 5 to 6 hour drive.
 
I met a group of 3 American birders in the mid-80’s who were spending a week on the Isles of Scilly to ‘take in’ the (then) highlight of the UK twitching season. They appreciated the good-natured ‘craic, the excellent range of species and the sheer amount of birders resident and visiting during October.

Back on the mainland they would have thought nothing of twitching anything as the driving involved would only be the same as for a couple of moderate-sized States back home.

Whilst most people on Scilly were there for the ‘Yanks’ they were there for the ‘Sibes’ which led to a lot of opposite rushing about for the hapless trio - indeed one of them actually ticked a ‘lifer’ when a party of Buff-breasted Sandpipers turned up on the Golf Course as one of them was a native New Yorker and still needed the species for his US list!:eek!:

I had some good chats with them over B :) in the Bishop and Wolf and remained in touch for a while (by letter i hasten to add) sadly we lost touch at the end of the decade. For them the highlights of their twitching scene were trips to New Mexico to get extra-limital species from Mexico and further South that overshoot from time to time these taking place with associated scorching temperatures etc. Their most anticipated trips however were a complete contrast with clinging mist and dubious visibility and were made to Attu an island in the Aleutian chain that ends tantalisingly near the Soviet Kamchatka Peninsular:eek!: The extra-limital Siberian and vagrant Eurasian species are much sought after by US birders and for them this is their Scillies.

Interestingly Attu afaik was the only North American soil to be occupied by the Japs during WW2 - they were soon turfed off by Uncle Sam though:t: All three had also done trips to the most Southerly of the Florida Keys - the Dry Tortugas - in search of Central American overshoots, rare Petrels and migrants generally.

Personally a day or 2 spent in Central Park for Spring Nearctic wood warblers would do me.....

Good birding / twitching -

Laurie:t:
 
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As to rollingthunder's comments, I've done the pilgrimage to Gambell (in the Bering Strait), SE Arizona, the Dry Tortugas, and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, but I don't really think of those as a twitch, per se, since often those are multi-day visits where multiple species can be picked up. To me, a twitch involves hopping the car (or a plane) to see one bird that you hope will still be there when you arrive.

Ironically, the only birds on Gambell that were new to my world list were birds that breed on Gambell. The Asian vagrants that showed up were all birds I'd already seen in Asia so I was just adding them to my NA list.
 
Wayland said:
Just curious to know what the twitching scene is like in the US. Obviously, here in the UK it is a big deal, where you can easily get dozens of birders at a good twitch. As an example, in the spring I found a Wood Sandpiper on my local patch and within 20 minutes of putting the news out five birders had arrived, for what is only a scarce (not rare) and regular migrant.

How does this compare with the US? Do you get many birders at a twitch? How far are people prepared to travel, and spend? Do you only bird "in state", etc.

Interested to know the comparisons.
Click to expand...

Watch the Big Year starring Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson. It's great, and it'll help provide insight to your question.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+bi...c&hvqmt=e&tag=mh0a9-21&ref=pd_sl_4y7aa8vl4f_e
 
Hello,

Last summer a Kirtland warbler turned up in Central Park, far from its Michigan summer grounds. I tried to glimpse it, going 100 metres off my usual walk but there were dozens of birders looking for the bird.

I missed it by 45 minutes.

Similarly, a boreal owl came south to Central Park, about fifteen years, ago. I never saw more than 2 dozen observing it, and that was at mid-day on a Sunday.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur Pinewood :hi:
 
Britseye said:
Watch the Big Year starring Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson. It's great, and it'll help provide insight to your question.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+bi...c&hvqmt=e&tag=mh0a9-21&ref=pd_sl_4y7aa8vl4f_e
Click to expand...

But please please please before you do read the book which is brilliantly written and a modern classic:-

https://books.google.co.uk/books/ab...=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y

Then by all means watch the film which is one of the minority of adaptations of a book which is pretty good.

All the best
 
My impression is that twitchers are much fewer on the ground in the US than in the UK and that there’s nothing comparable here to the mass British twitches with their casts of thousands and a police presence.
 
fugl said:
My impression is that twitchers are much fewer on the ground in the US than in the UK and that there’s nothing comparable here to the mass British twitches with their casts of thousands and a police presence.
Click to expand...

I'll have what you've been drinking B :).... police at British twitches are the exception rather than the rule, and are usually present to irritate people by being difficult about parking. Where parking isn't an issue you rarely see a copper at a twitch. o:D

I would agree the density is higher here: there probably isn't a different proportion of twitchers in the population but we have 70,000,000 on a small archipelago and you have 350,000,000 on a continent. I guess both population density and distances involved mitigate against mass twitches in the USA.

John
 
Farnboro John said:
. . .police at British twitches are the exception rather than the rule, and are usually present to irritate people by being difficult about parking. Where parking isn't an issue you rarely see a copper at a twitch.
Click to expand...

Obvious hyperbole on my part. That said, I’m unaware of anything like the big crowds, frayed tempers and ill-natured jostling for position at US twitches that I’ve read about here on BF with reference to UK twitches. Bare-knuckle competitive bird watching is just a bigger sport in Britain than in the US or so it appears to me. “Twitch”, “dip”, we haven’t even invented our own slang. . ..

Farnboro John said:
. I would agree the density is higher here: there probably isn't a different proportion of twitchers in the population. . .
Click to expand...

My impression is that the proportion of twitchers is higher—probably much higher—in the UK than in the US, though I have no way of proving this, of course.
 
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I have seen police presence at a twitch. It was mostly to monitor parking issues (and make money off of fines) on a small suburban road, and not to keep the birders from attacking each other.

And Arthur, I went after that Boreal Owl in Central Park. Of course, I went the day after it was last seen. A nearby Saw-whet Owl was a weak consolation.
 
Jeff hopkins said:
I
And Arthur, I went after that Boreal Owl in Central Park. Of course, I went the day after it was last seen. A nearby Saw-whet Owl was a weak consolation.
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You did not miss much, the owl was perched near the top of an evergreen and essentially buried visually. One could make out the head, but not much else.

Perhaps patient observers who watched it fly out got better views, but it did not offer crippling views.
 
fugl said:
Obvious hyperbole on my part. That said, I’m unaware of anything like the big crowds, frayed tempers and ill-natured jostling for position at US twitches that I’ve read about here on BF with reference to UK twitches. Bare-knuckle competitive bird watching is just a bigger sport in Britain than in the US or so it appears to me. “Twitch”, “dip”, we haven’t even invented our own slang. . ...
Click to expand...


Well, of course you don't need to invent slang - we've done it for you :t:

Not all of it is birding slang - dipping out has been adapted from ordinary English usage, for instance, though I'm not sure of the etymology.

And displays of ill-temper of any seriousness - bearing in mind that for "big" birds there will be a lot of people who have lost sleep, driven several hundred miles and then been lined up with increasing tension until they see the bird - are actually very rare. Unfortunately not only do some people at twitches, like Reginald D Hunter's audiences, "arrive offended" but twitching suffers from the same thing as serious crime: everything these days is reported nationally and the picture is consequently distorted - nothing has changed but one hears about everything!


fugl said:
My impression is that the proportion of twitchers is higher—probably much higher—in the UK than in the US, though I have no way of proving this, of course.
Click to expand...

You may be sort of right. We have a lot of birders who will deny being twitchers - hate the idea that they might be (perhaps it would detract from their sense of entitlement to denigrate twitchers and twitching?) but who will travel to see good birds in their local area/county/Region and/or take in present rarities on a weekend they have organised well in advance that just happens to be in North Norfolk in late September as Barred Warblers, Wrynecks and a bunch of rarer stuff pass through. They will deny having twitched Norfolk but IMHO the moment they change their plan to hit Titchwell in the morning because there is a White-rumped Sandpiper at Cley, they are twitching!

The great thing about birding is you can do as much or as little of it as you want, involving yourself with any part of the birding community you like - or not.

The unfortunate thing is that a really large amount of people then extrapolate that because they do things a particular way, anyone different is doing it wrong and must therefore be a wrong 'un. Which, as we all know, is only really true of robin-strokers and dudes..... 3:)

Cheers

John
 
Nutcracker said:
I've seen police at a twitch too . . . some policemen are good birders and want to see the bird as well :-O
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I've had many police drive past when I'm birding and ask what I'm seeing including one who stopped by when I was scoping our local airport...to warn me about Homeland Security concerns and guard dog patrols. But after he did that, he was quite interested to know what I'd found.
 
at a local level there is somewhat of a twitching scene in certain parts of the country. Certainly you will find it in places like NYC area and Southern California. But yeah, the distribution of population here in the USA is such that twitching is difficult at the ABA/national level, while many states just don't have the density of interested birders required. I also suspect there is big difference in that the vast majority of ultra rare ABA area birds are discovered in only a small handful of states. Unless you live in those areas, I would imagine that tamps down interest.
 
Agree with Mysticete. I'm a relatively new birder, just 3 years in, so there are plenty of relatively common birds I need to find in my neck of the woods without driving all over the place. I live in Texas, which takes something like 9 hours to drive across, so I haven't even reached the point where I twitch within my state. I definitely will hunt rarities within my county (Tarrant), which is itself 900 square miles, even if I've seen that particular bird in multiple other Texas counties. Especially for someone without the time and funds to travel far and frequently, county twitching always keeps things interesting for me.

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