You are right Black Kite I do not twitch birds found by others. If I see a group of birders twitching I usually walk the other way. Everyone to their own , but personally I feel we have a generation of birders who look on the pager service before they go birding instead of looking at the weather charts or seeking likely habitats. As anyone who has talked to me at the raptor watch points I will often point people in the right direction to find birds that I have seen . However I never put out information online on the pager service of any birds I have found unless they are at a wardened site that can cope with large numbers of birders or I might mention it after the birds have moved on. Time and time again I have found birds that have settled down for a long period , only for the news to leak out , twitching hoards to appear and the bird is frightened away.
I can give a prime example of this. There were two tundra race bean geese feeding with a flock of several hundred pink feet on a beet field south of Holkham. I spent many great afternoons watching them until someone put the news out. 20 odd birders descended on the place within an hour and to start with all was well as they stayed on the beet pad 300 yards off. Then two prats ( middle aged women who are forum members ) pushed past us to get a closer look. When I protested they answered " we have been watching geese for years and we know what we are doing ". They drove down a private track and of course put all the geese to flight and the beans left the field never to return. As they drove back past me I said to them " If you have been watching geese for so long its about time you knew what you were doing " , at which point I got an ear full from them as they drove off.
The times I have seen some lost rare warbler hemmed in by a hoard of twitchers leaves a bad taste in my mouth and personally is not what birdwatching is all about. Being out in the wilds alone , reading the weather and conditions , selecting the right habitat and then settling down quietly , out of sight studying the birds activity without it knowing I was close by is so much more rewarding than queuing up to tick a bird. Many a time I have crept away on hands and knees so as not to disturb it.
This morning I spend 4 hours watching 3 spoonbills feeding on a pool almost at my feet , coupled with 90 odd black tailed godwits , little stints and a host of other waders and wildfowl coupled with a young hobby chasing swifts that almost parted my hair. I crept away and they never knew I had been so close to them. Apart from a couple of distant walkers walking along the sea wall I had the place to myself. My kind of birdwatching .
